


On the Edge of the Devil's Backbone

by bedlamsbard



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: Rebels
Genre: Alternate Universe, Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-07-25
Updated: 2018-03-01
Packaged: 2018-04-11 02:27:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 27
Words: 320,988
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4417469
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bedlamsbard/pseuds/bedlamsbard
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ten years after she vanished during an Imperial raid on a Twi'lek colony, Cham Syndulla sees his daughter Hera for the first time in a hologram -- now wearing the uniform of an Imperial agent and apparently working closely with a human Inquisitor.  All Cham wants to do is to bring his long-missing child home to what remains of her family, but he soon finds that Hera Syndulla is only interested in two things: her duty to the Empire and her loyalty to her crew, a mismatched collection of outcasts brought together by Hera and her pet Inquisitor.</p>
<p>With Cham and the Rebel agent known as Fulcrum in pursuit, a new mission takes Hera and the crew of the <i>Ghost</i> to the planet Lothal, where a chance meeting with a Force-sensitive teenager awakens something long buried in the Inquisitor once known as Kanan Jarrus...and has dire consequences for Hera, their crew, the Empire, and the fledgling Rebel Alliance.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. A Forlorn Hope

_Ten years ago  
Zardossa Stix, Outer Rim Territories_

Hera Syndulla woke to chaos.

The colony’s emergency alarm was blaring, streaks of light flashing through the fluttering curtains over the room’s window. All of that came secondary to her little cousin Xiaan, who was sitting on Hera’s chest and pulling at the front of her nightshirt, shouting, “Hera, Hera, Hera!” at the top of her lungs. Mixed with the sound of someone else screaming and the baby crying, it was nearly enough to drown out the klaxon.

Hera scrambled upright, lifting Xiaan off her chest. She took in the rest of the room with a glance – Koyi pushed into a corner with his arms over his head, wailing uncontrollably, Ojeda silent but terrified as she tried to coax the baby into silence, Doriah somehow still asleep. Hera’s other two cousins were nowhere in sight.

Xiaan paused to breathe, then opened her mouth again, getting “Her –” out before Hera said, “I’m _up_ , Xi!” as if that wasn’t obvious. “Where’s your brother?”

“Don’t know,” Xiaan said, then tried to hide her face in Hera’s stomach.

Hera wrestled her off and flung the blankets aside. The eight children in the Syndulla household – her, her aunt Seku’s Nury and Xiaan, her aunt Aleema’s three, and her aunt Clotho’s Doriah and baby Lika – had all been sleeping in one room, sharing the beds and blankets the way Hera vaguely remembered doing years earlier during the Separatist occupation of Ryloth. Only the Separatists were no more and they weren’t on Ryloth, they were in the Twi’lek colony on Zardossa Stix, and there shouldn’t have _been_ an enemy.

Hera more or less fell out of bed, but that was where she wanted to be anyway. She dragged the blaster case out from under the bed, her fingers steady as she worked the combination on the lock. It snapped open and she pulled out the two blaster pistols inside, which made Xiaan squeak a little in worry.

“It’ll be all right,” Hera said automatically, scrambling to her feet with a pistol held in each hand. “Stay here. I’m going to find out what’s going on.”

The tiled floor was cool under her bare feet as she made her way to the doorway, which was blocked off from the atrium with a beaded curtain. Her mother and her aunts, wherever they were, couldn’t have missed the racket the cousins were making, even with the emergency alarm going off. Hera thrust the curtain aside and stepped out into the atrium, glancing down at the blasters in her hands to make sure that the safeties were still on.

“Mama?” she yelled. “Auntie Seku? Auntie Aleema?”

When there was no response, she ran to the front door, pulling it open to peer out into the street. People were running past, some of them carrying hand blasters and rifles, others children or possessions. Lights passed over the street, and Hera looked up automatically, squinting against the unexpected brightness to make out the shape of several Imperial gunships passing by overhead. They were shining searchlights down into the colony, and –

The sound of blasterfire made her jump back, her hands tightening on her blaster grips. Hera couldn’t see where the shooting was coming from, but she could hear it even over the sound of the klaxon, the _rat-a-tat-tat_ of a repeating blaster that she hadn’t heard since the Separatist occupation during the Clone Wars.

“Hera!”

She spun, starting to raise her blasters before she recognized the speaker. Her aunt slammed the door shut with a hand over Hera’s shoulder; Hera stepped hastily aside so that she could bolt it. “Auntie, what’s –”

“Go get your cousins,” Aleema Syndulla said. She was a small, deceptively delicate Twi’lek woman with the same orange skin as her brother, Hera’s father; she had one blind eye from a Separatist concussion grenade during the Clone Wars. She also had a blaster rifle slung over her shoulder.

“Where’s Mama?”

“With Seku getting the speeder. Go get your cousins, Hera!”

Hera didn’t need to be told a third time. She turned and ran back to the bedroom, which wasn’t any more or less chaotic than it had been the last time she had seen it, save that Xiaan was now draped over Doriah’s still-sleeping frame and shouting his name instead of Hera’s. Doriah had rolled over onto his stomach, his face buried in his pillow.

Hera shoved one of her blasters through the band of her thin sleeping pants, then scooped Xiaan up off him with her free hand and set her aside before kicking Doriah in the ribs. “Get up!”

“Go ‘way,” he muttered. He was the next oldest of the Syndulla cousins after Hera; suddenly all the jokes she had made about his being able to sleep through _anything_ seemed a lot less funny.

Four-year-old Koyi finally stopped screaming as Aleema followed Hera into the room. He flung himself towards her, nearly bowling over his sister and the baby in his single-minded approach, and wrapped himself around her leg. “Mama!”

Ojeda, carrying the baby, followed him more sedately. Her pale blue face was almost ashen with terror, but her voice was mostly steady as she said, “Mama, I can’t find Ilar –”

Doriah finally condescended to open his eyes as Hera kicked him again, then either saw the blaster in her hand or heard the alarm. “What the –” He scrambled to his feet, staring around before Hera shoved one of her blasters at him. He took it automatically, looking between Hera and Aleema.

“Get your cousins out through the back,” Aleema snapped, disentangling her son from her leg. “Ilar and Nury are with Seku and your mother, Hera –”

Blasterfire sounded, too near for comfort, and Koyi and the baby both screamed in piercing symphony. Still blinking back sleep, Doriah shoved his blaster through the band of his sleeping pants and leaned down to scoop up his baby sister from Ojeda’s arms, holding her against his shoulder. Xiaan grabbed at his free hand.

“Aren’t you coming, Mama?” Ojeda asked, her voice tight from strain.

“I’ll be right behind you,” Aleema promised. She stooped to hug Ojeda and Koyi briefly, then pulled her rifle off her shoulder. “Go!”

Ojeda caught her brother’s hand and pulled him after her, following Doriah out into the atrium and through the connecting rooms to the door at the back of the house. Hera brought up the rear, glancing back over her shoulder at her aunt, who was standing by the front window with her rifle held in both hands. The house in the colony was nowhere near the size of the Lessu townhouse or the Syndulla villa in the Rylothean countryside; from the back door you could see straight through the kitchen to the atrium.

“Hera, come on!” Doriah said.

She shook her head. “I’ll be right behind you. Doriah, take the others and run!”

He looked like he was about to protest. “Hera, you’re crazy!” he said, then shook his head and added, “Come on!” to the younger cousins, herding them in front of him out into the little kitchen garden.

Hera waited until they were all out of the house, then pulled the door shut and bolted it. She ran back through the house to the atrium, where her aunt jerked around in surprise at the sound of her footsteps.

“What are you doing here?”

“Whatever you’re doing, Auntie, you’re not doing it alone,” Hera said determinedly. She clicked the safety off her blaster, surprised to find that her hands weren’t shaking. “That’s not how we do things in this family.”

“Gods, you sound so much like your father sometimes –”

Blasterfire sounded so close to the house that Hera flinched, flashing through the curtain over the window. Aleema spun, just as something came flying through the window and bounced off the back wall.

Hera stared at it blankly, not understanding, and was still staring when Aleema caught her around the waist and threw her down, covering Hera’s body with her own as the thing exploded.

The world went white.

Hera didn’t know if she screamed or not, but she felt the tear in her throat as if she had. Her aunt was a heavy weight on top of her, unmoving, and Hera gasped her name, or tried to, but she couldn’t hear the words, even though she could feel them vibrate in her throat. She could see sparks dancing in her vision, flashing in and out, but after a moment she was able to make out the scuffed tile floor in front of her. It was dotted with red and Hera stared at it blankly, not understanding where that had come from; none of the floors in the house were painted or decorated with mosaic tiles the way they would have been back on Ryloth. Then another spot of red appeared, and another; Hera could feel something hot and went trickling down over the curve of her skull, down one of her lekku. Blood.

Her aunt still hadn’t moved.

Hera managed to squirm out from beneath her, smearing blood across the tiles as she did so. She put a hand automatically to her forehead, searching for its source, but she didn’t seem to be hurt. Getting up on her knees, she grabbed at Aleema’s shoulder, but her aunt’s head flopped limply back and forth as Hera shook her – then Hera saw the glittering fragments of metal embedded in her back, in her skull, blood staining the nightshirt she was wearing, running down over her lekku to pool on the tile.

“Aunt Aleema?” Hera said blankly, the words humming in her throat. She shook her aunt’s shoulder. “Auntie!”

She felt rather than saw the front door explode, ducking and covering her head as light flashed before her eyes. Without thinking, she dove for the blaster she had dropped when her aunt had thrown her down, grabbing for it with both hands, but before she could do more than that the first stormtrooper appeared in the doorway. Hera fired, but the shot went wild, blackening the wall by his head. He kicked the blaster out of her hands, and Hera yelled and leapt at him, her fingers curved to rake across his armor before he slammed his blaster rifle across her face.

Hera screamed, or thought she did; she hit the floor with a thud that she could feel in her bones, pain splitting her face. She could taste blood in her mouth, her vision and hearing going in and out.

“We’ve got a live one!” the stormtrooper shouted over his shoulder. He looked down at her, nudging her with one boot, and Hera groaned and tried to push herself upright. His foot came down hard on her stomach, holding her in place, and she wrapped her hands around his ankle, snarling a curse at him. “It’s a little girl!”

More stormtroopers poured through the door, moving through the house with their blasters raised. The last one in had the colored shoulder pauldron of an officer; she came over and toed Aleema’s body, rolling her over so that her one good eye stared sightlessly up at the ceiling. “This one’s dead,” the officer observed. She pulled a datapad out of her belt and glanced at it, then at Aleema again. “Aleema Syndulla. Blast!”

“What are you _doing_ here?” Hera gasped as the officer came over to look down at her. “This colony is peaceful! The Empire has no grounds –”

“And you must be Hera.” The officer leaned down, grabbed one of Hera’s lekku, and hauled her to her feet as the stormtrooper standing on top of her stepped back quickly. Hera screamed in mingled pain and outrage, clawing at the woman’s armored arm before the stormtrooper backhanded her. There was a sharp explosion of pain and an audible _crunch_ ; a moment later, blinking back tears of agony, Hera felt blood on her upper lip.

The officer gripped her by the chin, some of Hera’s blood dripping onto her white knuckle plate. “You belong to the Empire, little tailhead,” she said. “And the Empire will do as it pleases to whom it pleases.”

She released Hera with a jerk and said to the other stormtrooper, “Cuff her and put her with the others on the list.”

*

Hera was hauled out into the street with her arms jerked painfully around her back, binders on her wrists. She could feel blood running down her face where her forehead had been cut open by the blaster barrel and from her nose; the desert sand was cool against her bare feet and she kept stumbling.

Everywhere she looked, there were bodies – some stormtroopers, but mostly Twi’leks, their brilliant skin tones muted in the shadows of night. Blasterfire sounded both near and fire, and Hera smelled smoke – some of the houses were burning. Twi’lek vision was sharp, and Hera didn’t need the lights on the ends of the stormtroopers’ blaster barrels or from the gunships passing by overhead to see the faces of some of the dead Twi’leks. She didn’t know everyone in the colony, but she knew everyone who lived on her street, and she recognized some of them among the dead.

Her head was pounding and her broken nose ached badly, blood clotting on her lips, mouth, and chin until Hera couldn’t taste anything but iron. The stormtroopers holding her shoved her along, past other Twi’leks in custody. She could hear screaming, a man keening grief and women’s voices rising in agitation, children crying frantically. Hera was resisting the urge to do the same.

She was marched into the colony forum, where there were a number of other Twi’leks sitting or kneeling on the pavement. The stormtroopers pushed her down and Hera fell rather than sat, trying and failing to catch herself with her cuffed hands. She hit the ground so hard that it jarred her from head to toe, scraping painfully across her shoulder and knees.

For a moment she just lay there, blinking back tears of pain. Something in the colony was burning, but she couldn’t tell what; she could just see the flames licking at the sky, drifting smoke blotting out the other moons and the curve of the massive planet around which Zardossa Stix – itself a moon – orbited.

_Mama got away,_ she told herself. Alecto Syndulla and her sister-in-law Seku must have gotten away with Doriah and the other cousins. They had gotten away, and they would go back to Ryloth and get Hera’s father. Cham Syndulla would never allow this to go unpunished. He would show the Empire what it meant to tangle with the Syndullas, with Ryloth –

Someone caught at her shoulder. Hera flinched reflexively, then heard a half-familiar voice say in Twi’leki, “Here, child, easy – Mother of Mountains, it’s Syndulla’s daughter!”

“Hera,” she said through her teeth as the man who had spoken helped her to a sitting position. He was a red-skinned Twi’lek male whom she knew she had seen before, either at the _salutatio_ in her father’s house back on Ryloth or at her mother’s here in the colony. He had a rapidly darkening black eye, but unlike Hera’s, his hands were cuffed in front of him.

“Hera,” he repeated. “I’m Janon.”

“Nice to meet you,” Hera said, because she didn’t know what else to say. “Are you –” She looked around at the other prisoners in the forum, all Twi’leks, all in binders. Some of them had heard Janon’s cry of surprise and were looking over at her. Many of them, Hera realized with dismay, she knew – clients of her father’s, members of other curial families, a few more distant Syndulla cousins. “Why are we all here?”

“I don’t know,” Janon admitted. He looked at her with concern. “Where are your mother and your aunts?”

Hera swallowed. “Aunt Aleema’s dead. I don’t know where my mother and Aunt Seku are. I think they got away. I hope they got away.” She braced her hands behind her on the pavement and drew her knees up, leaning her forehead against them. Her head and nose were still throbbing, but Hera didn’t think that there was a single part of her body that didn’t hurt right now.

It wasn’t the first time that anyone had ever hurt her, but the other times had all been playground fights – she had never been struck by an adult before. And Aunt Aleema – she didn’t want to think about Aunt Aleema.

She didn’t know how long she sat there, watching stormtroopers bring other handcuffed Twi’leks into the forum and deposit them there under the watchful eyes of the guards and the walker stationed near the marketplace. The sky was just beginning to lighten to dawn when Hera heard someone shout her name.

Hera raised her head, her lekku slipping back over her shoulder, and saw her mother.

Alecto Syndulla was being escorted between two stormtroopers, her hands in binders in front of her. There was a scorch mark in her sleeve from a too-close blaster bolt, but otherwise she looked unhurt. Behind her, more stormtroopers were bringing her sister-in-law Seku Syndulla and Hera’s cousins into the forum. Even the little ones were in binders.

There was a low, rising murmur of dismay from the other Twi’leks in the forum.

“Mama,” she whispered.

Her mother said something to the stormtroopers that Hera couldn’t make out; they looked at each other for a moment, then turned to bring her and the others towards Hera, instead of just depositing them at the nearest edge of the group. They released Alecto with a shove and she dropped down to the ground next to Hera, reaching for her with her cuffed hands.

“Mama,” Hera gasped, and leaned against her, shuddering. She couldn’t hug her, not with her hands in binders behind her, but she could do this, at least.

“Hera, baby –” Her mother stroked her hands over Hera’s lekku, soothing, then said, “You’re hurt. Are you –”

“Auntie Aleema’s dead,” Hera mumbled. “There was – she tried to protect me.”

“Mama’s dead?” Ojeda whispered, settling gingerly onto the pavement beside them. Her brothers huddled beside her, the way Nury and Xiaan were doing with their mother. Doriah sat a little ways away from them, alone. His face was set in lines of shock and grief.

“How?” Seku asked in her soft voice. She didn’t look much like her sister, a little too angular to be pretty the way that Aleema was – had been. Like Hera, her hands had been cuffed behind her back; there was blood on her face.

“Does it matter?” Alecto said sharply.

“There was a fragmentation grenade,” Hera said. Shock seemed to have wiped all the emotion from her voice; it sounded tinny and distant to her ears, like a holotransmission. A bad one. “She knocked me down, she –”

“Oh,” Seku said after a moment, her voice utterly blank. She put her head down, her shoulders shaking. Xiaan leaned heavily against her, her head against her mother’s shoulder.

Hera wanted to do the same with her mother, but she was the oldest of the cousins, and there was someone missing. “Where’s the baby?” she asked Doriah. “Where’s Lika?”

She felt her mother tense against her. “Hera –”

“She’s dead,” Doriah said without looking up. “They killed her. They – they said it wasn’t worth wasting a blaster bolt on a baby, so they just –” He caught his breath on a sob. “What am I going to tell my mother?”

Hera’s aunt, Alecto’s sister Clotho, had stayed behind on Ryloth with Cham Syndulla’s freedom fighters. She was clan, but she wasn’t in Cham’s immediate family; he couldn’t make her go to the colony the way he had his sisters and his wife.

“It’s not your fault,” Alecto told him firmly. She closed her hands on Hera’s shoulder, pulling Hera against her. Hera looked away from Doriah and closed her eyes, breathing in her mother’s familiar scent.

“Feels like it,” she heard Doriah say.

They all sat there in silence. Hera felt the sun rise eventually, a slight wash of heat warming the cold night air. The sound of blasterfire had died to nothing, but she was aware of gunships going by overhead, walkers clunking through the streets. She didn’t look up; she didn’t want to see.

A little while later, she heard her mother’s soft gasp and finally opened her eyes.

It was full dawn now. In the daylight the damage to the colony was more obvious, carbon scoring from blaster hits on walls and columns, smoke rising from several places. Hera could see walkers towering over the one-story buildings that made up most of the colony, still making their slow, deliberate way around. Stormtroopers were all around the forum, watching the prisoners with their hands on their blasters. At least there weren’t any bodies here – or at least, none that Hera could see from where she was sitting.

And there was a monster standing in front of them.

Hera didn’t know how else to describe what she saw. He was a massive figure in black armor, a heavy cloak hanging from his shoulders and a mask and helmet that completely covered his face. Hera stared at him, unable to look away, because as grotesque as he was, there was something mesmerizing about him – terrifying, but mesmerizing.

“Darth Vader,” Aunt Seku said softly. “What’s _he_ doing here?”

Alecto turned her head slightly to frown at her sister-in-law, but didn’t respond.

There were two other Imperial officers with Vader, the female stormtrooper officer who had hit Hera back in the house and a man wearing a gray ISB uniform. While Vader stood still, considering them silently, the ISB agent walked back and forth in front of the seated prisoners, his gaze skating across them. He paused near Hera and her family, his gaze heavy on Hera, then moved on. After a few minutes of this he returned to Vader’s side.

“You know why you are here,” Vader said. He had a deep, somewhat mechanical voice that was made even more horrifying by the fact that it didn’t, quite, sound completely unnatural. “You know who is at fault.”

Alecto’s glare could have cut through solid durasteel. “This is a peaceful colony, settled under the parameters laid out by the Imperial Senate two years ago,” she said; Vader’s head swung around towards her. “No one here has violated any Imperial law. What do you think we’ve done, my lord, for the Empire to treat its own citizens so poorly?”

There was a mocking note to her voice that made Hera shift uncomfortably on the ground beside her. She knew that her parents – before they had argued and her father had sent the family away – had opposed the Empire’s increasingly authoritarian actions on Ryloth, but then it had just been politics, long hours in the Curia and late night holocalls to Senator Taa on Coruscant and Cham Syndulla’s other offworld contacts. Hera had walked in on her parents arguing about it more than once. But the Imperial presence on Ryloth wasn’t like the Clone Wars had been; there hadn’t been battle droids kicking down doors and dragging people out of their homes or star destroyers firebombing villages from orbit. They were just _there_.

“You are not citizens of the Empire,” said the female officer. She had taken her helmet off, revealing light brown skin and short-cropped black hair. “You are subjects. _Disloyal_ subjects.”

“We have rights!” Hera blurted out. She pushed herself upright, the motion awkward with her hands still cuffed behind her. Vader’s gaze went to her, or at least Hera thought that it did; it was hard to tell without being able to see his eyes, but somehow she could still feel the pressure of his stare. “We’re Imperial citizens. The Empire can’t just barge into a settlement and do – all this – without cause.”

“You are mistaken,” said Darth Vader, making her flinch. “What is your name, child?”

Hera’s breath was coming hard and fast, and she was painfully aware of the blood on her face. But she straightened her back and raised her chin, squaring her shoulders before she said, “I’m Hera Syndulla.”

His voice low, the ISB agent said to Vader, “That’s Cham Syndulla’s daughter. I’ve recommended her for Project Nemesis; I believe she’s an excellent candidate.”

“Do you.” Vader studied Hera, or at least she thought that he did. She swallowed, feeling the weight of his attention as though someone had dropped a load of bricks on her shoulders.

“You are here, Hera Syndulla,” he said at last, “because your father Cham Syndulla attempted to assassinate the Emperor Palpatine.”

“What?” Hera gasped; she heard her mother curse and her aunt hiss, “ _Damn_ you, Cham!” But the idea seemed utterly preposterous; her father had fought against the Separatists during the Clone Wars, but that had been the _Seppies_. This was the Empire – this was their own government. Cham Syndulla was a member of the Curia, Ryloth’s ruling body; he wasn’t some kind of terrorist. “You’re lying!”

“Attempted,” Vader repeated, “and _failed_. Remember that, Hera Syndulla.” He tiled his head a little in the ISB agent’s direction. “You want the girl?” he said. “Take her now.”

“What?” Hera repeated blankly, then his meaning registered and she flinched back. “No!”

There were stormtroopers already moving forward. Two of them grabbed her by either arm and Hera screamed, too startled to do anything else. Her mother let out a sharp cry of dismay and threw herself forwards, shouldering hard into the nearest stormtrooper’s legs and sending him crashing backwards. Doriah leapt on him immediately, driving an elbow down onto the vulnerable place on his neck beneath his helmet. Hera managed to pull free as Seku swept a leg out to catch the other stormtrooper off his feet, but there were already other stormtroopers rushing in.

One of them grabbed her around the waist and lifted her off the ground. Hera screamed, struggling in vain as she tried to get free. There was shouting all across the forum, Twi’leks yelling and surging upright; Hera saw the stormtroopers leveling their blaster rifles and screamed even louder as she was carried away.

She finally managed to squirm free of the stormtrooper’s grip, dropping heavily to the ground as he grabbed for her. Hera tried to scramble upright, with no clear plan other than to get away, and saw the ISB agent coming towards her with his blaster upraised.

The last thing she heard before the stun blast hit her in the chest was her mother screaming her name.

*

_Present day  
Somewhere in the Outer Rim Territories_

What seemed like a thousand years ago the _Forlorn Hope_ had been a Separatist frigate, but in the fifteen years following the end of the Clone Wars it had passed through the hands of a dozen different owners and experienced at least as many refits. Nearly all of them had been improvements; during the Clone Wars the frigates had been moderately capable warships, but afterwards they suffered from the fact that they had been constructed to be crewed entirely by droids, rather than organics. Most had been scrapped along with their crews, but a few had made it onto the black market despite the Empire’s prohibition on privately-owned capital warships. That Cham Syndulla had been able to buy this one at all had been a combination of several minor miracles, his wife’s connections in her old pod-racing circles, and the bulk of the credits in the Syndulla family’s offworld accounts.

A decade and a half ago the ship might well have been one of the Separatist ships in the blockade around Ryloth; now it was the only home that remained to what was left of the Free Ryloth movement. Cham and his people were many light years away from Ryloth now.

He was on the bridge with Mishaan Secura, the _Forlorn Hope_ ’s captain, and his cousin by marriage Sinthya Syndulla, who had just come back from Nal Hutta on a supply run, when one of the ship’s watch-standers called, “Captain, a ship just came out of hyperspace – a hunter-killer, no transponder signal.”

Mishaan’s scarred mouth settled into a frown as she and Cham exchanged wary looks. Hunter-killers was the general term for a type of small starship often used by bounty hunters; there was a standing bounty on Cham and any members of Free Ryloth.

“Hail it –” she began.

“We’re being hailed!” said the communications watch, nearly at the same time she had spoken. He turned in his chair to add, “It’s masked, but they’re asking for you, General.”

“Patch it through to my comlink,” Cham said. He waited for the watch-stander to give him a thumbs up before taking the comlink off his belt and saying, “This is Syndulla.”

_“This is Fulcrum, clearance code 510223. Permission to come aboard?”_

Mishaan said, “Scan that ship for life forms.”

“Just one, Captain.”

“This is unexpected,” Cham said into the comlink.

_“Something’s come up; there wasn’t time to set up a meeting.”_

“Landing bay two is open,” Mishaan said, after a glance at Cham to confirm.

Cham repeated that to Fulcrum, who confirmed it. He could see the hunter-killer through the viewport now, flanked by a pair of the V-19 Torrents Free Ryloth used in lieu of any starfighters actually built in the past decade. The hunter-killer banked around the curve of the _Forlorn Hope_ ’s hull, heading for landing bay two and out of sight now.

“Clear everyone out of the bay,” Cham said to Mishaan; he and Fulcrum had met in person before, but no one else in Free Ryloth had. This was the first time she had ever come to the _Forlorn Hope_ , rather than setting up a meeting elsewhere.

“Do you want company, Cham?” Sinthya asked.

“Not this time.”

Despite the frigate’s size, it didn’t take him long to get down to the landing bay, which true to word had been cleared of all the usual personnel who would normally be there – deck crew, fighter and transport pilots, children and other family members. The latter technically speaking weren’t supposed to be in an active landing bay, but they somehow always snuck in anyway.

Cham arrived just as the hunter-killer landed in the bay, folding its triangular wings up on either side of its wedge-shaped body. The rear hatch opened, a short ramp sliding out, and a cloaked figure appeared in the opening. She had a cloth tugged up over her nose, only her eyes and the tops of her montrals visible, but she pulled it down with one gloved hand so that Cham could see her face.

“You’d better come inside,” Ahsoka Tano said. “Sorry about the entrance.”

“You always did know how to make one,” Cham said, following her inside the ship.

It was sparsely decorated but comfortable, with a few crates fixed in magnetic clamps along one wall. Without a hold, the airlock led immediately into a tiny galley-cum-lounge, where a crescent-shaped bench had been built into a bulkhead. Ahsoka nodded at it as she unwound her headscarf, saying, “Sit down.”

“I take it that if the fleet was in danger, you would have led with that?” Cham asked, doing so.

Ahsoka slid into a seat on the other end of the bench, reaching into the layers of her robes and putting a small holoprojector on the table between them. “Of course. This is personal – I think.”

Cham frowned, not understanding. “Personal?”

“It’s probably better if I don’t say anything else.” She tapped a finger against the holoprojector. “Just watch it.”

That didn’t sound particularly encouraging, but pointing it out wouldn’t accomplish anything, so Cham just nodded. Ahsoka flicked the projector on, then sat back, her gaze fixed on him rather than the image.

The hologram showed a courtyard that Cham didn’t recognize; stormtroopers were unloading crates off the back of a troop transport. He frowned, wondering what about this had stood out to Ahsoka, then saw the door of the nearest building slide open and heard a buzz of voices – a woman and a man. The first one through, turned so sharply that he was practically walking backwards, was a man in the rich dress of a Core World government official. He gestured wildly with one hand as he spoke.

_“I don’t know what else you want me to do!”_ he said. _“I was under the impression that the Emperor had dispatched you here in order to take care of this problem, surely –”_

_“This ‘problem,’ as you call it, Governor, will not be solved if you keep hindering us at every opportunity,”_ the woman snapped, finishing the sentence just as she followed the man out into the courtyard.

To say that she wasn’t what Cham had been expecting would have been an understatement. She was a young green-skinned Twi’lek woman in a gray ISB field agent’s uniform, with a matching headwrap from which her ear-cones and her lekku protruded. Over her uniform jacket she was wearing a shaped metal cuirass, her rank indicated by colored squares over her left breast; she had a sidearm holstered on her right hip. She was followed by a human man that Cham didn’t recognize, wearing dark leathers and pieces of black armor – a chest plate and shoulder plates with the Imperial symbol painted on them. Cham glanced at him, then blinked and looked again, seeing the lightsaber on his belt this time.

“An Inquisitor?” he said to Ahsoka; he couldn’t remember ever having seen a human Inquisitor before, though he was hardly familiar with all of them.

“He’s my problem,” she said.

Cham looked back at the Twi’lek woman. The first man, the one she had addressed as governor, had come to a halt, his gaze flickering from her to the Inquisitor. _“Hindering you?”_ he repeated. _“Inquisitor – Agent Syndulla – you know I’ve been doing nothing of the sort! I’ve offered you all the aid that you’ve asked for –”_

Syndulla.

_“If you were at all interested in doing your job, then there would not be mad bombers running around Thyferra destroying the Emperor’s property!”_ the woman said. _“My team and I were sent here because you are incapable of doing so. However, instead of accomplishing my_ very simple _orders, you have continually overridden them.”_

_“What you asked for isn’t possible, Agent!”_ said the governor. _“You don’t understand how things work on Thyferra –”_

_“And I think that_ you _don’t understand how things work in the Empire, Governor,”_ said the woman. _“The Emperor is not pleased with your handling of this affair. He’s requested your personal presence on Coruscant.”_

_“My –”_ The governor stared at her, his eyes huge and horrified. _“I’ve done nothing wrong!”_

_“You’ve done everything wrong,”_ said the Inquisitor, speaking for the first time.

The governor turned towards him, falling a step back. Even the stormtroopers, who had previously been pretending that there was nothing happening, stopped what they were doing.

If Cham had run into the Inquisitor in a cantina, he didn’t think he would have looked twice at the man. He had warm amber skin, dark brown hair tied back from his face in a ponytail, a short beard, and a scarred notch in one ear; Cham didn’t think he was much older than his late twenties. There was something about the heavy-looking layers of his uniform that made Cham think of the Jedi he had known during the Clone Wars, though he couldn’t think what it was apart from the tabards that extended nearly to his knees. Maybe it was just the lightsaber; he was the only Inquisitor Cham had seen who carried what looked like a regular single-bladed one, rather than the round-hilted ones all the others had.

He had the saddest eyes that Cham had ever seen and the kind of face that looked like it would have been more comfortable smiling, but he wasn’t smiling now, and even through the hologram he radiated threat.

_“You’re lucky,”_ he said, _“that I wasn’t ordered to deal with you personally.”_

The Twi’lek woman turned her head slightly to watch him. Her lekku swayed with the movement, and Cham saw for the first time the circular white markings decorating them.

He stopped breathing.

Though some were born with unusual markings or colorings, most Twi’leks didn’t decorate their lekku. On Ryloth only Twi’leks from the curial caste, Cham’s caste, did so, and by the time Ryloth fell it had gone out of fashion as an old-fashioned habit from the planet’s violent and uncivilized past. Cham’s lekku were decorated. So had been his daughter’s.

Agent Syndulla, the governor of Thyferra had said.

Cham watched as the man fell back another step. The Inquisitor leaned forward slightly, apparently as intent on him as a nexu on its prey; the Twi’lek woman laid a hand on his wrist and he stopped abruptly.

_“The Emperor,”_ she said to the governor, _“is saving that particular pleasure for himself. But in case you’re thinking about running before your shuttle leaves in the morning, I’ll remind you that we’re more than capable of dealing with treason on our own when given the opportunity.”_

_“I –”_ The governor’s gaze moved from her to the Inquisitor, who was watching him with an unblinking gaze. _“I – I serve at the Emperor’s pleasure, of course.”_

_“Of course,”_ the woman echoed, her mouth twisting slightly. _“Don’t forget that, Governor. And don’t worry. By the time you return – if you return – my team and I will have taken care of your little rebel problem.”_

She closed her fingers around the Inquisitor’s wrist and tugged slightly; he finally took his attention off the governor and turned towards her, his expression softening for the first time. The two of them went back inside the building, leaving the governor standing in the courtyard with the stormtroopers, who had long since stopped pretending they weren’t listening.

A moment later the hologram blinked out.

Cham stared at the place where it had been for a few moments, then raised his gaze to Ahsoka. She was watching him with an expression that he couldn’t read.

“One of my contacts on Thyferra sent this to me a few hours ago,” she said. “It was recorded yesterday.”

When Cham didn’t say anything, she added gently, “It’s her, isn’t it?”

Cham swallowed. “Do you have a close-up image?”

Ahsoka nodded, turning the holoprojector back on. She cycled through several different holograms, including a close-up of the human Inquisitor with the sad eyes. The next image was of the Twi’lek woman.

She was in her early twenties and undeniably beautiful, with a narrow face, pointed chin, and green eyes. The marks on her lekku were clearer here than they had been in the other hologram, though Cham didn’t need them to recognize his own child.

“That’s her,” he told Ahsoka, the words catching in his throat. “That’s Hera. That’s my daughter.”

*

Ahsoka had passed the holoprojector to him, and Cham couldn’t stop looking at it, at the image of his beautiful daughter grown to adulthood in his absence. The last time he had seen her, Hera Syndulla had been a gangly teenager, all knees and elbows. They hadn’t parted on good terms; neither she nor Alecto had wanted to leave Ryloth, but Cham had insisted, and Hera had left him without so much as a goodbye, walking onto the passenger transport without looking back at him.

“When things began to get bad on Ryloth,” he said finally to Ahsoka, who had been sitting quietly and waiting for him to speak, “when the Empire began to tighten its fist, I sent Hera and Alecto away with my sisters. The colony on Zardossa Stix was founded years ago, after the Separatist occupation ended – you remember?”

Ahsoka nodded a little. She had been one of the Jedi sent by the Republic to liberate the planet, then a fourteen-year-old apprentice with more guts than good sense. Cham had only met her briefly then; true to Mace Windu’s word, the Republic had not stayed long once it had accomplished its work.

The Republic had never returned. It was the Empire that had come back.

“Ryloth has never been a rich world, not like Naboo or Chandrila. We have – we _had_ – riches beneath our soil, yes, but we cannot eat ryll, our children cannot survive on spice alone. The Separatists destroyed many villages and farms on Ryloth; without the food they produced, my people came very close to starving. Many of them left Ryloth for colonies offworld, as has been done countless times in the past. The colony on Zardossa Stix was a new one, not an old one. I invested heavily in it when my client Amiel first brought the idea to me, and it was made up largely of members of my clan or those who had fought alongside me in the Resistance.” Cham knotted his fingers together, looking down at Hera’s unsmiling face. Blue lines flickered in the hologram, moving from bottom to top.

“I never resented them for looking elsewhere after fighting for Ryloth’s freedom,” Cham said, though Ahsoka hadn’t said anything of the sort. “I love Ryloth, but Ryloth has not always loved its children, and it is a harsh parent. Many, many times in the past Twi’leks have left Ryloth because there was no other way for them to survive. And it was useful for me to have such close ties with an offworld colony, especially one so distant from the rest of the Republic as the one on Zardossa Stix. The Republic, and then the Empire. I thought it far beyond the Empire’s reach.”

“But it wasn’t,” Ahsoka said quietly.

“No.” Cham raised his gaze from the hologram, looking at the scarred bulkhead behind Ahsoka’s head. “I saw under the Separatists what an armed occupation could do to Ryloth, to my people – I knew that while Ryloth has always survived in the past, many of my people would die. When they came at first the Empire preached peace – but they came with soldiers. I sent my wife and my child away before the violence began, along with any of my people that wanted to go. Both my sisters went, along with their children.” He rubbed a hand over his chin. “All told, the colony was about ten thousand souls – including my family. They were supposed to be safe!” he said with sudden violence. “I didn’t think that the Empire even knew that they had left Ryloth, let alone where they were. After the attack on the Emperor, I knew that there would be reprisals, but I assumed that they would come on Ryloth. I never dreamed that the Emperor would look offworld.”

Cham rubbed at his forehead again. “They came while Ryloth was still under an Imperial blockade and communications blackout. Alecto tells me that they had no warning – none at all. One moment they were safe in their beds, the next – you know how it is, Ahsoka.”

“I do,” Ahsoka said. “I know very well.”

“The Empire left the dead in the streets to rot,” Cham said. “When I came there, after I was told, you could still see where they had lain. Scavengers had devoured their flesh and scattered their bones, but you could tell.” His sister Aleema had been among the dead. His other sister, Seku, had died in Imperial custody. His little nieces and nephews had been scattered to the four corners of the galaxy; of the seven of them, only two had ever made their way back to eventually join the remnants of Free Ryloth, years later. The others were as vanished as Hera.

As Hera had been, until now.

Cham looked back down at the hologram. Hera would be about twenty-four now, nearly twenty-five. Almost half a lifetime gone, and Cham had no idea how she had spent it. Had she been happy? Had she been hurt? Why would an Empire which hated nonhumans put a Twi’lek woman in an Imperial uniform?

For a moment he wondered if it could possibly be a trick, then he remembered the sharp, confident way that Hera had spoken, the way that every Imperial he had ever met had. She hadn’t affected a Core accent, the way Imperials often did, but there hadn’t been any trace of her Rylothean accent remaining. Hera had had the nothing accent common to the Mid Rim, which wouldn’t raise an eyebrow anywhere from Wild Space to the Deep Core.

They had even taken his daughter’s voice from her, Cham thought, and clenched a fist tightly enough that his sharpened nails dug into the soft flesh of his palm.

Ahsoka was watching him with dark, concerned eyes. Cham knew that she had seen the ruin that the Empire left of settlements it unleashed its might before; he had, and knew that Zardossa Stix was virtually identical to all of the others.

“Alecto told me,” he said at last, “that the Imperials had a list. There was an ISB agent present when the colony fell, and he had a list – about three hundred names, people connected to me, to Free Ryloth, other curial families. Alecto was on that list. So were Hera, and my sisters, and their children…” He let his voice trail off, thinking. He had heard this story from Alecto and from the other survivors of the colony. Of the ten thousand Twi’leks that had been in the colony, fewer than a hundred had ever returned. Cham was lucky that Alecto had been among them. “They were separated from the others, held elsewhere while my people were taken away and the colony burned around them. Then – Darth Vader came.”

Ahsoka stilled. “Vader himself? You’re certain?”

“I saw him on Ryloth ten years ago,” Cham said. “The description I was given – I can’t see who else it would be. He is…memorable.”

“So I’ve been told,” Ahsoka said darkly. “Vader took Hera?”

Cham shook his head a little. “He was there when she was taken, but I don’t know –” He closed his eyes, trying to remember how it had been put by the handful of survivors, then looked up at Ahsoka. “She was taken. That was the last anyone from the colony ever saw of her.” He stared at the hologram. “That was ten years ago. I haven’t seen her in eleven – almost twelve now.”

“How old is she now?”

“Twenty-four.” Cham ran a hand back over his head, over the tops of his lekku and partway down their length before stopping. “She would be twenty-four.”

He took a breath, bracing himself before he continued. “After I heard what happened on Zardossa Stix, after – Ryloth – I looked for her. I looked for all of them. But the Empire is vast and once it has what it wants in its grasp, it never lets go. I guessed – I _knew_ – that she was still alive, but…” He shook his head. “Finding one being in the galaxy is nearly impossible. And – you know what the Empire does to its prisoners.”

“Yes.”

Especially to young Twi’lek women, Cham thought, but didn’t say the words; Ahsoka knew that as well as he did. Togruta hardly fared any better than Twi’leks. “I’ve never stopped looking,” he said. “For her, for any of my people. I’ve found a few. But most of them are gone. I thought –” He looked back down at the hologram, at the Imperial uniform Hera was wearing. “I never expected this.”

“Nobody could have,” Ahsoka said gently. She stretched out a hand over the table to touch the back of his palm very gently, her gloved fingers dark against his own pale orange skin. “Aside from the Inquisitors, I wasn’t aware that there were any nonhumans in the Imperial service that were in the field. The Empire generally prefers to hide the fact that everyone in a uniform isn’t quite human; they keep us locked up in little rooms on Coruscant slicing databases and making weapons.” She gave him a slim smile; Cham couldn’t bring himself to return it.

After a moment Ahsoka’s smile faded. She said, “At least you know she’s alive now.”

Cham looked up from the hologram. “That’s no small thing,” he said. He reached out a finger, very gently, but touched the base of holoprojector rather than the image itself. After a moment he made himself ask, “What about the Inquisitor with her? Do you know anything about him?”

Ahsoka let go of him and reached for the holoprojector; Cham let it slip out from beneath his fingers, and Ahsoka flipped the image back to that of the Inquisitor. She looked at it for a few seconds before saying, “No, I don’t know anything about him. I’ve got a contact that I’ll set up a meeting with after I leave here – they should know something about him, but whether or not they’ll be willing to share…” She shrugged. “I’ll find out, I guess. There have been human Inquisitors in the past, but not many of them. Not that that means much. I’ve never even been able to find out how many Inquisitors there are.”

“I’ve never met one in person,” Cham said; anything to keep from thinking about Hera in that uniform, with that sharp Imperial bite to her voice. “Is it – normal – to find one with an ISB agent like this?”

Ahsoka looked up at him. “No,” she said. “No, it’s not. I’ve seen Inquisitors and ISB agents work together before, but usually they’re at each other’s throats the entire time. The Inquisition and the ISB don’t exactly get along.” She rubbed at her forehead, along the base of her montrals. “The terrorists they’re investigating on Thyferra are locals, no offworld connections. My contact in the Imperial Complex says that they aren’t rebels worth trying to set up a meeting with – it’s some kind of infighting between the cartels, but it’s impacting Imperial bacta production. Thus –” She gestured at the holoprojector. “They’ve been there for almost two weeks now.”

“Thyferra,” Cham said slowly. It was a world in the Inner Rim, the place where bacta had been discovered. There were other suppliers in the galaxy, but the best bacta still came from Thyferra. Anything that threatened the Empire’s use of the drug would undoubtedly be met with overwhelming force – or the best and most reliable tool for the job.

_She can’t be_ , he thought, sick at heart, but he couldn’t see the Empire sending someone that they didn’t trust absolutely to the source of one of their most precious resources, even with an Inquisitor in tow. Perhaps especially with an Inquisitor in tow.

“Is this all there is?” he asked Ahsoka. “Just this hologram?”

“It’s the only one with sound,” she replied. “The others are much shorter, from security cams, not personal recordings.”

“Show me.”

“There isn’t much to see,” she said, but she took the holoprojector back and fiddled with it for a few moments before setting it on the table again.

The hologram that appeared had clearly been taken at a distance. There was no color in it, just the blue common to low-grade security holos. It showed part of a street lined with shops; Hera was standing in the center of it, gesturing with one outstretched arm to a squadron of stormtroopers. The image jerked and began to loop as they trotted off in the direction indicated.

Ahsoka glanced up at him, waiting for Cham to nod before she toggled it to the next one, which showed a corridor, probably from somewhere in the Imperial Complex – all Imperial buildings looked the same. Hera and the Inquisitor appeared at the end of the corridor, apparently speaking to each other. The Inquisitor said something that made Hera laugh, a smile spreading across her face; she chucked a finger under his chin and he grinned back at her, comfortable and easy. Both of them seemed lighter, happier; the Inquisitor less terrifying and Hera less severe. Then Hera curved her hand around the back of the Inquisitor’s head and pulled him down into a kiss, and Cham felt as though he had been punched in the gut.

He must have made some indication of surprise, because Ahsoka leaned forward hastily to shut off the holoprojector, but even before she touched it the hologram began to loop.

Cham stared at the place it had been, his mouth dry and his hands clenched into fists. Conscious thought and cool evaluation had vanished in the face of pure emotion; all Cham wanted to do was to hit something.

“Cham?” Ahsoka said.

After a moment he dragged his gaze up towards her. She was leaning forward across the table, one hand slightly extended, as if she had started to reach for him before thinking better of it.

He felt his lekku shift as he moved his head, unable to shake the image of Hera reaching for the Inquisitor, smiling at him, her body curving in towards his with familiar invitation. An _Inquisitor_.

He said, “I’m going to kill him.”

“Cham, you can’t kill an Inquisitor,” Ahsoka said quickly.

Cham bared his teeth, aware of the filed-sharp points in a way that he normally wasn’t. “Watch me.”

“You will mostly likely die,” Ahsoka articulated clearly. “Hera won’t thank you for getting yourself killed in a vain gesture. Neither will your people.” She made a gesture with one hand, encompassing the _Forlorn Hope_ and the other ships in the Free Ryloth’s small fleet.

“Are you planning on stopping me, Ahsoka?” Cham said, spreading his hands slightly.

She sighed. “It’s your decision to make. But we don’t know anything yet; it would be rash to take action before we have any more information. Right now you know that Hera is alive. That’s more than you knew an hour ago and that’s what you should concentrate on right now. The rest is just details.”

“Rather important details, I think,” Cham said sharply. “My daughter, the Imperial agent? And her –” He couldn’t think of a word he wanted to use. “– the Inquisitor?”

“And we can find out those details,” Ahsoka said quickly. “Trust me, Cham. You and I both have sources in the Imperial service. Someone, somewhere, knows something. An ISB agent and an Inquisitor don’t just appear from nowhere without a record.”

“You want me to leave my daughter –”

“Exactly where she’s been for the past ten years!” Ahsoka said. She leaned forward, her expression earnest. “I know it’s difficult, Cham. But a few more days – a few more weeks – it won’t make a difference for her. Let me find out what happened between Zardossa Stix and now. I’m not telling you not to think about her –”

“Really,” Cham said. “Because that’s what it sounds like.”

She rubbed at her forehead. “That’s not what I meant, then.”

Cham closed his eyes, lacing his fingers together to keep from hitting something. Even after two wars he didn’t think of himself as a violent man, but this was his _child_ –

After a moment he made himself look up. “I know that the Empire can be very persuasive,” he said. “Under – under the right circumstances. I could believe that Hera – that Hera could be convinced to serve the Empire if they made her think that it was right, but she would never be some man’s – some man’s –” He couldn’t say the words, bile rising in his throat. It was the fate that he had spent the past decade convinced that his daughter had been forced into, but it seemed unimaginably cruel to have it come hand in hand with the uniform she was wearing.

Ahsoka’s mouth tightened. “You don’t know that that’s what it is,” she said.

“What else could it be?”

“The Empire has had her for ten years, Cham,” Ahsoka said, her voice gentle. “She’s not the person you remember her being. She’s not the child you used to know.”

“But she is my child, Ahsoka!” Cham said sharply. “She is still my child!”

“Of course she is! But she isn’t a child.” Her gaze slid towards the holoprojector. “I’ll do whatever I can to help you get her back. But it may not be as simple as you want it to be.”

Cham flattened his hands against the table top. “Whatever has been done to her,” he said. “Whatever the Empire – whatever that Inquisitor – has done to her, she is still my daughter. I will not leave her there.” He met Ahsoka’s concerned gaze.

“I never suggested that you do,” she said quietly.

He shook his head and stood up. “I’m going to find my daughter,” he said. “I’m going to bring her back to her people. And I’m going to kill the Inquisitor who did this to her.”

*

When Cham left the landing bay a few minutes later, having watched Ahsoka’s hunter-killer depart and jump to hyperspace once it was safely clear of the _Forlorn Hope_ , he found a number of people lingering around in the corridor outside. One of them was Sinthya, who had brought a half-dozen members of her crew, all heavily-muscled Twi’lek men and women wearing conspicuous blasters. Gobi was there too, his arms crossed over his chest as he looked everywhere but at the hatch to the landing bay.

And, unsurprisingly, Cham’s wife Alecto Syndulla was leaning against the opposite wall, a smudge of engine grease on her nose and somehow smeared across both lekku; she must have been in one of the other landing bays when she had heard about Fulcrum’s arrival.

As he emerged from the bay she raised her head to meet his eyes, pushing away from the wall. She was a tall Twi’lek woman with green skin a little darker than Hera’s, dressed in a long-sleeved shirt open over a tank top and utility pants. There was a long, ragged scar that traced down the right side of her face, beginning somewhere beneath her brown leather headwrap and ending beneath her chin. Alecto hadn’t had it when she had left Ryloth eleven years earlier.

“You can send your men away,” Cham said to Sinthya. “They’re not necessary.”

She shrugged. “Better safe than sorry.”

“Fulcrum isn’t a threat to us.”

Sinthya shrugged again, but she jerked her chin at her second-in-command, who gathered the others with a glance and took off down the corridor. Sinthya herself didn’t move.

The deck chief, a small pink-skinned Twi’lek woman with elaborate tattoos on her arms and lekku, looked inquisitively at Cham; he nodded to let her know that the landing bay was clear and that she and the deck crew could return. As she hauled the hatch open and they began to file back in, Cham finally turned to Alecto.

“Trouble?” she asked.

“That is not an inaccurate assessment,” Cham had to allow.

“Should I get Mishaan?” Gobi asked.

“No. This is a family matter, not something that affects the fleet.”

Alecto’s lekku had lifted a little when Cham said _family_ , and Sinthya leaned in quickly. The Syndulla clan was disproportionately represented both at the vanished Zardossa Stix colony and in the fleet; “family” could mean anything from fifth and sixth cousins with barely a drop of Syndulla blood to long time clients of the direct line. Or it could mean something more immediate.

Alecto looked at Cham, her gaze searching and a little desperate. He put a hand on her shoulder, squeezing slightly, and said, “Let’s go somewhere more private.”

Sinthya and Gobi fell in with them as they started down the corridor. Cham hesitated for a moment, wondering whether to send them away or not, then finally decided against it. Sinthya was family; Gobi was clan. It was as simple as that.

Despite its size, the _Forlorn Hope_ was crowded with various crew members and their families. Cham had to go all the way back to his stateroom before he could find anywhere that he was certain of not being overheard. Only after the hatch was shut behind him and Alecto and Gobi were seated on the narrow couch, Sinthya perched on the arm with one leg dangling free, did Cham say, “Fulcrum found Hera.”

Alecto jerked as though she had been shot. “She’s alive?” she said, her voice sharp. “She’s safe?”

Sinthya reached over to grip her cousin’s shoulder with one lilac hand. She and Alecto were from another branch of the Syndulla family, not the main line, and except for the color of their skin looked alike enough to be sisters. “Where is she?” she asked Cham.

Cham took a deep breath. “Right now,” he said, “Thyferra.”

“Why are we still here, then?” Alecto said, starting to rise. “Let’s go get her –”

“It’s not that simple,” Cham made himself say. He took the holodisc Ahsoka had given him out of his pocket and slid it into the holoprojector on the low coffee table in front of the couch, which was currently cluttered with datapads and flimsiplasts. The head-and-shoulders hologram of Hera appeared in nearly life-size, rather than the miniature that Ahsoka’s smaller holoprojector had displayed.

Alecto leaned forward towards it, starting to stretch out one hand as though to touch Hera’s face before she curled her fingers into a fist. Her expression was longing; Cham looked at her and then away, studying the worn carpet beneath his boots.

“That’s an Imperial – that’s an ISB uniform,” Sinthya said.

Cham raised his gaze.

Alecto looked up at him. “She’s an ISB agent?” she said. “That’s – what did they do to her?”

“I don’t know,” Cham said. “Fulcrum didn’t know either – that’s why this was brought to my attention. Fulcrum wasn’t sure if it was Hera or someone else from the clan.”

“Fulcrum knew that she was a Syndulla?” Gobi asked, looking surprised. Most people in the clan didn’t share the surname outside of the main line, though Alecto’s and Sinthya’s families both did.

“There’s a vid.”

“I want to see it,” Alecto said immediately. When Cham hesitated, she added, “She’s my daughter too, Cham. She was taken from _me_. I need to see it, no matter what’s on it.”

Cham didn’t have a good objection to that, but before he could reach for the holoprojector again, Alecto added, “Whatever it is, I’ve seen worse.”

Cham didn’t have anything to say in response to that, either.

He leaned down and toggled the holoprojector to the next file, and the hologram of the Thyferran Imperial Complex courtyard appeared in miniature, spreading out across the surface of the cluttered coffee table. The four of them watched in silence, Gobi flinching when the Inquisitor spoke and Alecto fisting one hand against her mouth at Hera’s easy threats. When the holovid ended, no one said anything for a few moments.

Finally, Sinthya said quietly, “She sounds like an Imperial.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Alecto said without looking up. “She’s still our Hera.”

“What does the Inquisitor have to do with her?” Gobi asked. “Is it just coincidence that there’s an Inquisitor there? They’re not…” He let the words trail off, then finally finished, “This doesn’t seem like the sort of situation that calls for an Inquisitor.”

“They seem to be…involved,” Cham had to say. Even thinking the words made him uncomfortable, remembering the easy way his daughter had pulled the Inquisitor down to her. The Inquisitors were monsters in Imperial uniforms. Everyone knew that.

Alecto’s brows narrowed. “Involved?” she said. “What do you mean –” She got his meaning abruptly and her face twisted into a snarl. “I’ll kill him.”

She pushed herself to her feet, throwing off Sinthya’s hand, and took a few restless steps around the coffee table, coming to a stop in front of Cham. “We’re going to get her,” she said. As he started to speak, she thumped a closed fist lightly into his chest. “I don’t care what they did to her, what they made her think, what they made her do. Our daughter isn’t spending one more minute in Imperial custody. We’re going to get her now, Cham.”


	2. Spectres

_Stygeon Prime, Outer Rim Territories_

_This_ , Ahsoka Tano thought as she stepped through the heavy security doors into the wide entryway beyond, _is definitely a trap._

Senator Trayvis’s information was usually good, but this had been just a little too good to be true. It wasn’t, however, an opportunity that Ahsoka could pass up no matter what the risk; better she be the one to spring the trap than anyone less equipped to handle whatever the sting in the tail was. If she lived through this, she would have to find some way of contacting Senator Trayvis and let him know that he was being deliberately fed poisoned intel; he wasn’t the one acting on it and probably didn’t realize that people were dying as a result.

QT-KT followed Ahsoka into the narrow entryway, skirting delicately past the unconscious stormtroopers. Most of the Jedi astromechs had long since been destroyed – droids who spent a long time around Force-users tended to develop personalities that persisted no matter how many data wipes were used – and Ahsoka had no idea how Aayla Secura’s astromech had managed to survive this long, but she was glad QT-KT had. She was even more glad that QT-KT had ended up in her possession; Qutee seemed pretty happy about it too.

The doors slid shut behind them with a heavy clang that made Ahsoka wince, locking them inside the high security prison known as the Spire. She rested a hand on the hilt of one of her lightsabers as she ran quickly down the corridor, QT-KT rolling after her. There was a data terminal next to the turbolift and QT-KT plugged into it without being asked. Ahsoka bent over the terminal, running a finger down the information until she found what she was looking for.

“Got it,” she told the droid. “Detention block CC-01. Isolation cell 0169. Blast, the schematics we have must be outdated; there weren’t supposed to be isolation cells on the lower levels.”

That had been a risk – it was always a risk – but there hadn’t been anything more recent, and Ahsoka had had to pull favors just to get her hands on the data in the first place. But all that really meant was an adjustment to the plan, and since the plan mostly consisted of “wing it,” Ahsoka could live with that.

She hit the call button for the turbolift and stood back, tapping a finger anxiously against the hilt of her lightsaber. She hadn’t told anyone that she was coming here; she didn’t have any backup waiting for her if she ran into trouble. With QT-KT with her, she didn’t even have someone to call if she needed a quick exit. Ahsoka wouldn’t walk anyone else into a trap, especially a trap that was undoubtedly meant for a Jedi. There were at least two beings she knew who would happily have walked into it with her, but not this time. This she had to do on her own.

Ahsoka Tano hadn’t been a Jedi for a long time now, but she was the closest the galaxy had anymore, and she knew that neither the Sith nor the Inquisition cared one way or another what she called herself.

The turbolift doors slid open with a faint ding as the lift arrived. Ahsoka tensed, prepared for it to be full of stormtroopers, but it was empty. She stepped inside, QT-KT rolling in after her with a softly-voiced query.

“We’ll stay together for now,” Ahsoka told the astromech, watching the doors close before the lift began to descend. She could feel Luminara Unduli in her mind, but there was something _off_ about her, something that Ahsoka couldn’t quite put her finger on. Everything about the Force was clouded now, though, far more so than it had been even in the last days of the Clone Wars. Ahsoka had been taught to trust in the Force, but she knew now that the Force could trick and deceive her, that others could use the Force against her in a way that would have been unthinkable when the Jedi Order still existed. It might not be Luminara waiting for her in that cell.

Worse, it might be, but she wouldn’t be Luminara Unduli anymore. Ahsoka knew better than most than to call anything impossible, especially in these dark days.

The lift chimed softly as it reached the lowest level of the prison. Ahsoka could sense the stormtroopers standing guard just outside the doors, letting her fingers flex as the lift doors slid open. The stormies didn’t even have time to react before Ahsoka reached out and dragged them back into the lift. QT-KT zapped one with an outstretched electric prong, sparks dancing briefly all over his armor, while Ahsoka slammed the other man’s head into the wall until he slumped limply to the floor. She and Qutee left them there as they stepped out into the corridor, where there was another data terminal next to the elevator control.

“Plug in and download everything you can,” Ahsoka told her. “Don’t worry about decrypting it now; we can do that later. And keep your comlink on.”

The astromech beeped a soft affirmative.

Ahsoka had barely turned in the direction of the isolation cells when two more stormtroopers came around the corner. “Hey, you!” said the one in the lead as they both raised their blasters. “Stop!”

Ahsoka slammed her hands sideways, the Force sending both men flying in opposite directions. They hit the walls of the corridor with a dull clang and dropped limply to the floor.

Catching her lip between her teeth, Ahsoka hauled them one at a time back to the lift to hide with the others, not wanting the security cams to pick up on a couple of unconscious troopers lying around. She wasn’t sure whether or not their arrival had been within range of the infrared signal of the jammer she was carrying, though she suspected that if it hadn’t been there would already be alarm klaxons sounding across the facility.

_Except for the part where this is a trap. One I’m walking right into._

QT-KT had already plugged into the data terminal. Ahsoka briefly dropped a hand on her dome, then left at an easy lope, her lekku bouncing as she ran. No point in dragging this out, after all.

She slowed as she reached the cross-corridor connecting to the one where Luminara’s cell was located. There were more stormtroopers here, two of them standing outside a single cell; Ahsoka could sense that none of the others were occupied. As she approached, she heard the murmur of their conversation.

“Ever seen this Jedi master?”

“Don’t have the clearance.”

Ahsoka reached behind her and slipped a slim metal cylinder off her belt, weighing it for a moment as she gauged the distance. Then she depressed the trigger and crouched to roll it towards the two stormtroopers, ducking back immediately. The stun grenade detonated with a faint _whump_ of expanding energy; it was immediately followed by two thumps, and Ahsoka peered back around the corner to see both stormtroopers unconscious on the floor.

She pulled her primary lightsaber off its hook as she stepped out into the corridor, the weight familiar and comforting in her hand. One of the stormtroopers had fallen across the door; Ahsoka stooped to drag him out of the way, then stood still for a moment, prodding with the Force. She couldn’t sense anything but endless roiling fog, and somewhere in there, a tiny pinprick of light that might have been Luminara Unduli once upon a time. _Definitely a trap._

“Well,” she said out loud, “here goes nothing.” She waved her free hand at the control panel, watching the light turn from red to green as the door unlocked.

There was something in there. Ahsoka was pretty sure that it wasn’t Luminara Unduli, not anymore.

*

_Thyferra, Inner Rim_

“If any of you idiots screws this up,” Hera Syndulla said over Talon Squadron’s comm frequency, “the next birds you’ll be flying will be your own coffins. Is that clear? No heroics.”

Even if everyone else in the Thyferra Planetary Imperial Complex was still having trouble wrapping their heads around the idea of taking orders from a nonhuman, the TIE pilots assigned to the base had definitely learned their lesson, so the response was a very satisfying, _“Yes, Spectre Two,”_ across the board.

Hera switched frequencies. “Talon Squadron is locked and loaded,” she said. “Everyone else, check in.”

_“Spectre One, check.”_

Chopper, whose call sign was Spectre Three, grumbled something that Hera chose to interpret as acknowledgment.

_“Spectre Four, check.”_

_“Spectre Five, check.”_

“All right,” Hera said, flexing her gloved fingers on her TIE fighter’s control yoke. “Let’s do this. One, it’s your show.”

_“Roger that.”_ Kanan’s voice was clipped, all of his usual restless energy narrowed down to the moment. _“Be ready to move on my mark, Two.”_

“Acknowledged, One.” She flexed her hands again, trying to will her shoulders to unclench and not succeeding. Hera was flush with adrenaline, the kind that always came prior to an operation where she was working with unknown variables. Their last few operations hadn’t involved outsiders, just the team; trusting to stormtroopers and TIE pilots to do what they were ordered was a little too much trust, as far as Hera was concerned. But this time she didn’t have a choice.

_“Five, move now,”_ Kanan said.

Right now, if everything was going as planned, Sabine should be flushing their first target out of the restaurant where they were supposed to be having dinner. A Lasat had a tendency to raise a few eyebrows, but no one looked twice at a teenage girl.

For a few minutes, there was nothing but silence on the crew frequency. Hera could hear her own breath scraping at her ears, heavier and louder in the confines of the TIE than she was accustomed to. She kept the crew frequency on in one ear and toggled to the squadron frequency in the other, half-hoping for chatter just so she could yell at them, but the other pilots were silent.

Then Kanan said, _“Three, you’re up.”_

That meant that their target, three members of the Xucphra cartel and their bodyguards, had taken the bait and were moving out of the restaurant. Zeb was lurking in the back alley, with the intent of keeping them occupied for the precious few minutes it would take for the members of the rival Zaltin cartel to make their move. Neither of them knew that the Empire was watching, but they would soon enough.

_“Our new friends are on the move,”_ Zeb reported a moment later; he was watching from one of the rooftops. _“Right on schedule.”_

_“Three, confirm that Target Besh is in motion?”_

Chopper chirped confirmation.

_“My turn,”_ Kanan said. _“Three, Five, you’re with me. Two, wait for my signal.”_

“Be careful, love,” Hera couldn’t keep from saying.

_“You know me,”_ Kanan said, a hint of familiar humor in his voice, _“I’m always careful.”_

“Tell that to someone who hasn’t had to pull shrapnel out of your extremely attractive backside.”

_“Oh, you think it’s –”_

_“This is cute and all,”_ Sabine interrupted, _“but can you two save it for later? We are on a timetable here.”_

Hera shut her eyes, picturing it in her mind’s eye. This wasn’t the first time Kanan had pulled this move; Hera had been with him on previous occasions, and knew that he was fully capable of carrying it out without a hitch as long as their targets cooperated. Hera had spent enough time on the ground with him that she still hadn’t quite adjusted to being up here – whether “up here” meant in the _Ghost_ , the _Phantom_ , or the cockpit of a TIE.

_“We’re in,”_ Kanan reported a moment later, his voice much softer now. He and Sabine would be crouched in the pitch-black of one of the bacta transports, while Chopper wended his way through the neatly packed containers of bacta to the controls. _“Four?”_

_“Target Aurek’s still on schedule, One. Intercept in three.”_

_“Acknowledged, Four. Two, move in…two.”_

“Acknowledged, One,” Hera said. She rolled her shoulders back and kept an eye on the dashboard chrono. All she could see through the viewport was the back of the building whose covered parking lot the TIEs were waiting in, safely concealed from sight either from the road or above. When the timer on her dash reached thirty seconds, Hera triggered the control that rolled the parking lot’s roof back from over them and said over the squadron frequency, “Talon Squadron, launch – now!”

Five TIE fighters rocketed up into the still night air, the four members of the squadron dropping into formation in a square with Hera’s TIE at the center. They swung east, moving fast above the planetary capital of Zalxuc City. Most of the buildings in the city were only two or three stories, which cut down on the amount of air traffic; at this hour there weren’t many hovercraft in the streets, either. Figures were visible on the rooftops beneath them; many beings too poor to afford air-conditioning units would be sleeping on the roofs in an attempt to seek some relief from the heat. Others were moving, using the roofs as a passage-way secondary to the ground-level streets.

Hera and Talon Squadron followed Kanan’s tracer signal across the city, finally spotting the three hovertrucks from above. The one that Kanan and the others had infiltrated was obvious from above; he had used his lightsaber to cut a hole in the roof so that he, Sabine, and Chopper could drop down.

“One, this is Two,” Hera said. “Talon Squadron is above you.”

_“Roger that,”_ Kanan began, then Sabine’s voice cut in.

_“Oh, aren’t you just_ gorgeous _?”_

_“Spectre Five, tell me that isn’t what I think it is,”_ Kanan said, sounding weary.

_“It’s a bomb,”_ Sabine said brightly. _“A beautiful one. A real work of art. I want to meet the person who built this one.”_

“Talon Squadron, hold formation above the convoy,” Hera said over the squadron frequency. “Five, can you –”

_“It’s not active,”_ Sabine said defensively. _“It’s – hey!”_

Over the comm, Hera had heard Kanan’s lightsaber hiss into existence and out of it again within seconds.

_“I could have disarmed it!”_ Sabine protested.

_“And now you don’t have to,”_ Kanan said. _“You can take it apart later.”_

_“You already did that!”_

“Try and remember we’re on a schedule here,” Hera said dryly.

_“Yeah, and you’re about to hit your mark, One,”_ Zeb added.

Hera peered out of the viewport, spotting the oblong building that the hovertruck convoy was about to pass. “I see it, Four.”

Her fingers flexed again; she ran her tongue over her teeth, leaning forward a little, waiting for the order. Any moment now.

*

Ahsoka kept her lightsaber in her fist as she went down the steps into the cell, and despite everything that the Force was telling her, she couldn’t help her soft gasp when she saw what was inside.

When Ahsoka had been a padawan, more years ago than she cared to think about – a lifetime ago, the rise of an empire ago – Luminara Unduli had seemed larger than life, one of the legends of the Jedi Order like Obi-Wan Kenobi or Mace Windu. She had been an impressive woman in the way that all Jedi were impressive, because that was what Jedi were – the Force made flesh.

But this – this was the Force scraped raw and held captive, used in a way that the Force had never been meant to be used. It wasn’t Luminara Unduli, but a long time ago it had been.

Luminara Unduli, or her ghost, or whatever it was, was sitting on the edge of the bench built into the wall with her head in her hands. She was wearing an orange and white prison uniform with her identification number printed across the front, her hands in binders in front of her – even broken and stripped of all the trappings of her office, a Jedi was dangerous; no one in their right mind would ever leave one free. As Ahsoka stopped in front of her, holding into her lightsaber so tightly she could feel the edges digging into her palm, Luminara raised her head.

She was older than she had been the last time Ahsoka had seen her in the flesh, maybe be as much as the fifteen years it had been. There were fine lines around her mouth and eyes, a touch of gray in her dark eyebrows; the tattoos on her chin were a little faded. Whatever she saw made her eyes widen and her jaw tighten, before she slid off the bench and walked over to stand in front of Ahsoka. Her steps echoed oddly on the metal floor.

_It_ isn’t _her_ , Ahsoka reminded herself, but she couldn’t stop herself from saying, “Master Luminara?”

Luminara didn’t respond. Her line of sight was slightly beneath Ahsoka’s, and she studied whoever she was looking at for a few moments, her expression set. There wasn’t even a shiver of emotion in the Force, no hint of what was going through – what had gone through – her mind.

And she had no shadow.

Ahsoka could see her own shadow against the opposite wall, but Luminara herself cast no shadow. Whoever she was looking at she didn’t respond to; she turned away and walked towards the side of the cell, towards a – 

_No._

The edge of Luminara’s shoulder passed through the thing as she turned back, her gaze still fixed on whoever had stood in Ahsoka’s place. Luminara stepped backwards into the thing, the hologram starting to dissolve. For a moment she was still alive, her face whole and her eyes bright, and then –

Ahsoka retched, barely managing to hold her lekku back with both hands. There were tears in her eyes when she finally straightened upright, wiping the back of her hand over her mouth.

“Luminous beings are we,” she whispered, Master Yoda’s old words hollow in her mouth. “You’re one with the Force now, Master. Be at peace.”

“Peace?” said a voice from behind her. “That’s certainly one word for it.”

*

Kanan’s voice suddenly dropped in pitch, his accent shifting back to his native upper-class Coruscanti rather than the Outer Rim one he had preferred as long as Hera had known him. _“All units, this is the Inquisitor. Move now.”_

“Talon Squadron, engage as ordered,” Hera said crisply. As the TIEs broke off to follow their pre-assigned patterns, Hera dropped her own TIE straight down into the street, hitting the trigger as soon as she had a clear shot. The lead hovertruck ground into the pavement as the laser bolts disabled the antigrav and the engines, the other TIEs doing the same with the other hovertrucks. Stormtroopers poured out of the surrounding buildings, shouting for the drivers and personal security to exit the vehicles.

Instead of complying, armed natives poured out. Blasterfire briefly illuminated the night as they engaged the stormtroopers; Hera targeted the nearest knot of Xucphra soldiers and sprayed the ground around them with laserfire. The other TIE pilots were already doing the same.

Obviously confused by the sudden shift in events, Zaltin soldiers appeared at the other end of the street, some of them piled into airspeeders with mounted repeating blasters. They began to shoot indiscriminately at both the stormtroopers and the Xucphra convoy.

Out of the corner of her eye, Hera saw a dark figure drop down from a rooftop into the midst of the Zaltin soldiers. Zeb’s roar carried over the still open comm, the energy crackle of his bo-rifle briefly drowning out the shouts of alarm around him.

Red light flashed into existence on top of the center hovertruck. Kanan ran along the top of the vehicle, Sabine hoisting herself out after him but remaining in place to fire at the Xucphra guards. Kanan leapt from one hovertruck to the next, deflecting blaster bolts with his lightsaber, then tucked himself into a roll and landed in a crouch in the street just in front of Hera’s TIE. He flashed a quick grin up at her, saluting with the two fingers of his free hand, then ran under the body of the TIE. Hera flipped the fighter around to follow him, hoping that Talon Squadron didn’t manage to screw anything up with the Xucphra guards.

She sprayed the ground in front of the armed speeders with laserfire, driving some of the soldiers right back into Zeb and his bo-rifle. Others were frozen, staring in stunned horror at Kanan, who was standing still in the empty space before Hera’s TIE, his lightsaber held out to one side.

Hera triggered the external comm and said, “This is the Imperial Security Bureau. Stand down now or be destroyed. Or take it up with the Inquisitor.”

*

Ahsoka spun. There was a Pau’an male standing at the top of the steps where there hadn’t been anyone before. He was dressed all in gray, except for his black armor and boots, with red blood-stripes down his sleeves. She could see the Imperial cog marked on his shoulder-plates.

“I am the Inquisitor,” he said, and ignited his red lightsaber out to one side as the door slid shut behind him. “Welcome.”

Ahsoka moved into a guard stance, not bothering to take her shoto off its hook. “You’re late, Inquisitor,” she said. “I was expecting you earlier.”

“Somewhere to be, Jedi?”

“I’m not a Jedi,” Ahsoka said, and ignited her lightsaber. “Only one of you? You must not be popular back at the Crucible.”

The Inquisitor’s eyes narrowed slightly.

“Don’t worry,” Ahsoka told him. “That won’t be a problem for long.”

“Someone,” he said, “has been talking.”

Ahsoka just smiled. She was still smiling as she darted forward, instinctively keeping low to the ground.

The Inquisitor had been expecting her to make the first move, and he met the forward slash of her lightsaber with his own, trying to sweep both blades sideways in an attempt to make her lose her grip. Ahsoka disengaged and dodged sideways as he struck forwards, slamming a booted foot into the back of his knee. He staggered for an instant, but still got his lightsaber up in time to block her downwards blow.

Red and white lightsabers clashed in the small room, until Ahsoka managed to trap the Inquisitor with his back to the door. She thrust both hands out, shoving with the Force. He went flying backwards, taking the door with him, and slammed into the opposite side of the corridor. Ahsoka ran lightly up the steps after him; he was trying to pick himself up out of the rubble, shaking his head to clear it, then saw her coming and flipped to his feet, igniting both blades of his lightsaber as the pommel guard flipped back over his wrist.

In response, Ahsoka pulled her shoto off her belt and ignited it.

He came at her with a downward sweep of his lightsaber; Ahsoka backflipped over the first blade and ducked the second, coming in with a low slash of her primary saber that glanced off his left tasset. The Inquisitor jerked back in automatic surprise and Ahsoka came up to slam a kick into his jaw, stabbing forward with her shoto in a backhanded blow that went straight through his chest plate.

He grunted in surprise and Ahsoka spun, both blades slicing cleanly through his wrists an instant before another kick to the midsection sent him sprawling backwards, gasping in shock. She deactivated her shoto and stepped forwards, leaning down to lay her primary lightsaber so close to his throat that she could see his flesh darkening.

“You want a merciful death, Inquisitor?” she said. “Then tell me what I want to know!”

“Do you think I fear death?” the Inquisitor said through his teeth, his voice breathy with agony.

“I don’t think you like pain,” Ahsoka said. She rested one foot on the place where her shoto had gone through his right shoulder and pressed down slightly. “There’s a human Inquisitor, a man working with a Twi’lek ISB agent –”

“Still looking for Jedi, Togruta?” said the Inquisitor. His throat worked for a moment, then he bit down.

“No!” Ahsoka said, lightsaber deactivating as she jerked forward; but it was too late. The Inquisitor’s eyes rolled up in his head and his whole body shuddered, blood-flecked white foam appearing at the corners of his mouth. A moment later he was dead.

“Blast!” She hung her lightsaber back on its hook, then pulled her comlink off her belt as she turned away from the Inquisitor’s body. No alarm klaxons were sounding, so the stormtroopers probably thought that the Inquisitor still had everything under control. “Idiot monong!”

She had turned her comlink on just in time for QT-KT to hear her last comment. “No, not you. You ready to go? No, I don’t expect you to have copied the entire database, but let’s not hang around for the stormies to figure out I’m not dead yet. Get what you can; I’ll be there in a minute. Let’s get out of here.”

*

Unsurprisingly, nearly all the cartel members took the first option as the better part of valor. Hera landed her TIE and came out to supervise as Imperial transports trundled into the blasterfire-riddled street, hauling in specialists and hauling out cartel members in binders. Sabine had taken personal possession of the bomb that had been in the central hovertruck, which Kanan had disabled by simply cutting it in half with his lightsaber, and was huddled over it off to the side of the street, while Zeb sat on one of the liberated containers of bacta and watched the stormtroopers. For some reason, the local bucketheads didn’t seem to be particularly comfortable with this.

_Good_ , Hera thought, handing a datapad off to one of the local Imperial officers. The other woman was trying hard to pretend that it didn’t bother her to take orders from someone five years younger and a nonhuman to boot, which was better than many of the other Imperial officials Hera had dealt with. She was never sure whether it was her youth, her species, or the combination of the two that really irritated most Imperials. Hera had found that the reason didn’t particularly matter; the result was the same either way.

A flicker of movement out of the corner of her eye caught her attention, and Hera turned her head to see Kanan walking restlessly back and forth at the very edge of the security cordon, in the shadows of a building where he was barely noticeable. Twi’leks had much sharper vision than humans and even from here Hera could tell that he was clenching and unclenching his hands over and over again, his fingers flaring wide before closing into fists. Each about-face was abrupt, military precise after exactly ten steps in one direction, then another ten steps in the opposite direction before he turned again.

“Take over here,” Hera told the other officer, then turned away before the woman had a chance to respond.

Hera’s lekku, confined by her headwrap but still hanging free, slapped against her shoulders as she walked, an unwelcome and unnecessary reminder that despite the fact that she wore an Imperial uniform, she would never be the same as the other officers in the service. After ten years, Hera was finally coming to terms with that.

Kanan didn’t look up as she approached, though she could tell from the line of tension in his shoulders that he had noticed. Hera waited for a moment to see if he reacted, then said, “Kanan.”

His pacing paused. He was facing away from her; Hera could hear his breath rasping in the warm, damp air, and his hands were still clenching and unclenching.

“Kanan,” she said again, and when he didn’t respond, she stepped into the shadows with him.

“Shouldn’t you be doing something?” he said. His voice was mostly steady, but there was an edge to it that Hera didn’t like. He had been like this for the past few weeks, ever since they had landed on Thyferra; Hera didn’t know if it was the assignment or something else.

“I delegated.”

“You know the stormies won’t take orders from Zeb or Sabine.”

“That’s what competent local officers are for,” Hera said. She laid a hand on Kanan’s arm, and he finally turned to look down at her.

“Did you just actually admit someone else was competent?”

“Semi-competent,” Hera allowed. “It’s just cleanup. Anyone can do that.” She reached up to clasp his face between her hands, studying him as he looked down at her. He seemed more tired than anything else; there wasn’t any unwelcome fever-heat in his green eyes, just exhaustion.

“This was a good op, Kanan,” Hera told him. “Tomorrow you and I go in and talk to the heads of the cartels and remind them why it’s a very bad idea to mess with the Empire’s bacta supply while they’re carrying out their own private war. If they have any brains they’ll listen, and by this time next week we’ll all be out of here. Preferably to a planet where we can actually _breathe_ the air instead of drinking it.”

“It’s not the op,” Kanan said. He covered one of her hands with his and Hera let her other hand drop. “The op was fine. The op was perfect. Well, except for Sabine’s new pet project, but that wasn’t even –”

“What is it then?”

His mouth tightened. “I don’t know. I just have a feeling.”

“Good feeling? Bad feeling? Force feeling?”

“I can’t tell.” He rubbed a hand over the back of his head, stopping when his fingers hit his ponytail. “Maybe I just need more sleep.”

“You always need more sleep, dear.” Kanan had nightmares less frequently now than he had had those first two years after he had come back from Mustafar, and he seldom woke up screaming anymore, but Hera knew that he still didn’t sleep through most nights.

“Tell me something I don’t know.” He kissed her fingertips through her glove, then said, “Are you flying back?”

“I was going to pass the TIE off to someone else and ride back on one of the transports,” Hera said. “Better to supervise the semi-competent locals.” That, and she hated leaving Kanan alone when he was like this, though she wasn’t going to say so in so many words. Zeb and Sabine would be with him, but they had never seen Kanan when it got really bad, and Hera knew that Kanan would prefer they never did.

Kanan slanted a look at her that suggested he knew exactly what was going through her head, but didn’t protest. “Talon Squadron did good,” he said as Hera drew him back into the light cast by the transports’ headlamps.

“They did all right,” Hera conceded. “This was atmo, though. Who knows if they’ll ever make half-decent vacuum jockeys?”

“Hopefully we won’t be here long enough to find out.”

Sabine hopped up from her perusal of what was left of the bomb as they approached. “You know, I’d be able to find out a lot more about this thing if Inquisitor Thinks With His Lightsaber here had just let me disable it.”

Kanan spread his hands. “Hey, we were on a schedule, remember?”

“It would have only taken me thirty seconds!” She glanced back at the bomb. “Maybe a minute. I didn’t really get a chance to look before you _cut it in half_.”

“Forgive me for not wanting to get blown to hell in the middle of an op,” Kanan said. “You find out anything from it?”

Sabine patted it proprietarily. “Whoever built it isn’t human, or anyone who uses a base-10 number system. It’s not –” She made an indeterminate gesture with her hands. “It’s pretty good, but not as great as I thought when I first saw it. I could do better.”

“Well, _yeah_ ,” Zeb said, crossing his arms. He drummed a heel against the bacta canister, long bare toes scratching at the pavement.

“And someday we’ll take you up on that,” Kanan said. “Not today, though.”

Sabine sighed.

“You said that it wasn’t built by someone who uses base-10,” Hera said; that included a nearly innumerable amount of species, not to mention some human colonies, but here on Thyferra – “Could a Vratix have done it?”

“A what? Oh, the indigs.” Sabine considered. “I don’t know. Maybe. I haven’t seen anything they’ve done around here, not even any art.”

“That’s because they don’t live in Zalxuc City,” Zeb rumbled. “You know humans. Don’t want any ugly reminders that they came in and stomped all over someone else’s planet, at least not where they can see them. And the Vratix are pretty ugly.”

“I am human,” Sabine reminded him. “So’s Kanan.”

“I know.”

Sabine rolled her eyes at him, then turned back to Hera. “Does it matter if it was a Vratix?” she said. “Humans aren’t the only beings who live here. It could have been anyone.”

“If it’s a Vratix, that means at least one of them is cooperating with the cartels,” Kanan said. “And we came in thinking that the Vratix and the cartels didn’t have anything to do with each other, since the cartels are the ones who kicked them out of their own cities. So a Vratix being involved could be a very bad sign.”

“Or a good one,” Sabine suggested. “Maybe they finally got tired of the cartels lording it over them.”

“That’s not exactly a good thing,” Kanan said with a sideways glance at Hera; they had seen what the outcome of _that_ was on other worlds. “Let’s leave it for now. Take that thing back to the Imperial Complex and see if you can find anything else out from it.”

“I’d be able to find out a lot more if –”

“I know, Sabine,” he said, sounding long-suffering. He turned to Hera and rested a hand on her shoulder. “I’m going to borrow a speeder bike and drive by the Xucphra and Zaltin complexes, see if I can get a read on how they’re reacting to the raid.”

“Not alone you’re not,” Hera said. “Zeb, you want to take the TIE back? I’ll go with Kanan.”

“My pleasure.”

As he rose from his seat on the canister, the Imperial officer that Hera had speaking to earlier came trotting up to them. She cast equally nervous glances between Zeb and Kanan, then said, “Inquisitor, Agent Syndulla? We’re finished here.”

“Good,” Hera said. “Clear it out, get the prisoners back to the Imperial Complex. Oh – and the Inquisitor and I are going to need two of your speeder bikes.”

*

Ahsoka didn’t let herself think about what had happened until after the _Aegis_ was safely in hyperspace. With Stygeon Prime far behind, she slumped back into the pilot’s chair, rubbing a hand over her face.

She had known walking into the Spire that it was a near-certainty that Luminara was already long dead, but there had been that sliver of hope that this time the Empire had had something else in mind for her, no matter how horrible it might be. She just hadn’t thought – it was funny how the Empire, even now, after all these years, still managed to shock and horrify her.

Luminara would have been the first person to tell her that it was only flesh and bone, just matter. Nothing of her remained. But there had been something, some spark in the Force, and that spark had given Ahsoka hope –

_A spark is not a fire, Tano._ Material objects could hold a touch of their owners’ or creators’ souls even millennia later; why should a body be any different? When it came down to it a corpse was just an object, after all. Luminara – the person Luminara Unduli had been and would always be – was part of the living Force now. She was beyond whatever harm the Empire had done her.

Ahsoka knew that, but the knowledge didn’t make this any easier. It never did.

She levered herself up out of her chair, feeling weariness in every muscle. The _Aegis_ would be in hyperspace for another sixteen hours at least; that was more than enough time for her to take a shower and eat something before falling into bed for most of it. Luminara Unduli was just one more name for Ahsoka to strike from her list of unaccounted for Jedi and add to her list of dead. The latter was far longer than the first.

QT-KT was plugged into a jury-rigged computer console in the lounge, crunching data and trying to decrypt the files she had copied from the terminal in the Spire. Ahsoka didn’t know if there would be anything useful there – she wasn’t even sure if there had been other prisoners in the Spire; she had only been focused on Luminara, and that might have been a mistake – but it was worth looking, at least.

She stuck her head into the lounge to check on the droid, then stepped into the ship’s tiny refresher, stripping out of her armor and tossing her lightsabers and headdress onto the counter. The ship’s water heater was brand new; Ahsoka turned the temperature up as hot as it would go and braced herself against the wall, bowing her head and feeling the water run over her montrals and lekku, down her shoulders. It would have been too hot for a human to handle without burning, but for Ahsoka it just felt good. She wanted to burn the memory of the Spire from her skin.

When she felt the temperature start to drop, she reached for the soap and a cloth to scrub herself clean. The water was icy by the time she finished and Ahsoka hissed in distaste, shutting the shower off as she reached for a towel. She left her armor on the floor and her headdress on the counter, but took her lightsabers with her as she crossed the hallway into her cabin to find something to wear, poking desultorily through her small wardrobe before pulling on a pair of loose pants and a worn shirt with a hole in the sleeve. She slumped down onto her bunk, staring at the lightsabers beside her. She had seen so many dead Jedi over the years. One more shouldn’t have affected her this much.

Ahsoka didn’t know how long she had been sitting there when her cabin door slid open. QT-KT warbled a query, and Ahsoka made herself raise her head. “What is it? Did you find something?”

Let this not be an entirely wasted trip. A dead Inquisitor wasn’t worth much in the long run; there were more where he had come from.

In response, Qutee rolled forward, holding a datapad out with one pronged arm. Ahsoka took it from her, still thinking about Luminara and Jedi. It took her a moment to realize that the name on the file was something else entirely. _Hera Syndulla._

Ahsoka blinked, passed a hand over her eyes, then frowned, reading more closely.

_File: Hera Syndulla_  
_Class: Project Nemesis candidate_  
_826-3772_

She paged back to find that the file was part of a list of former inmates; none of the other names stood out to Ahsoka, and after a few minutes of searching she went back to Hera Syndulla’s file. QT-KT had managed to decrypt it, at least. Ahsoka skimmed it, not sure what she was looking for, then went back and read it more thoroughly, feeling her stomach sink.

“Qutee,” she said, looking up. “Go change course for the Free Ryloth fleet. I need to talk to Cham Syndulla again.”

*

Heat or not, most of the locals must have been spooked by the blasterfire that had accompanied the Imperial raid on the convoy and had retreated back inside their homes; Hera and Kanan saw only a few passersby on the darkened streets as their speeder bikes races through the city.

The speed of their passage raised enough of a breeze as to offer some respite from the wet heat of the night. Outside Zalxuc City the jungle was a constantly encroaching threat, as though even after centuries Thyferra still sought to throw off its human invaders by any means possible. Even in the city there were places where the wild seemed to be making a fair try at regaining its hold on the urban infestation, saplings breaking up through the pavement and vines twining their way up walls. It reminded Hera a little of her one childhood trip to Ryloth’s equatorial jungle, an experience she otherwise preferred not to think about.

Kanan had been quiet since they had left the rest of the Imperial task force, not that their transit made conversation particularly likely. They had been a little closer to the Xucphra complex than to the Zaltin one – on the other side of the city, naturally – so they had swung by it first. News of the attack on the convoy must have reached them, because it had been lit up, both armed guards and security droids patrolling the top of the wall that separated it off from the rest of the neighborhood. There hadn’t been any point in sticking around; Hera had commed the Imperial Complex and told them to dispatch probe droids to keep an eye on the Xucphra. As far as she was concerned, though, no probe droid was a substitute for a good first-person look, though. 

They were about ten minutes from the Zaltin complex when a blaster shot shattered the peace of the night.

It struck Kanan so hard that he went flying off the back of his speeder bike to land in the street, sending the bike swerving into the nearest wall, where the front end crumpled but – thankfully – didn’t explode. Hera braked her bike and vaulted off it, drawing her blaster as she ran to Kanan. Looking up, she couldn’t tell where the shot had come from; the sniper had already ducked out of sight, and the trajectory meant that it could have been any of several surrounding rooftops.

“Kanan!”

She slid to her knees beside him, keeping hold of her blaster with one hand as she reached for him with the other. There was a smoking hole in his chest plate and he was still, far too still, but when Hera pressed her fingers to his neck beneath his gorget she could feel his pulse. The smell of burned plasteel was overwhelming, but she thought that beneath it she could detect the odor of burned flesh, which might mean anything; she wouldn’t be able to tell how bad the injury was until she got the armor off him.

Breathing hard, Hera raised her comlink. “This is Agent Syndulla, ISB-327. I need stormtroopers and a medical evac to my location, immediately.”

She barely waited for confirmation before she switched frequencies. “Spectre Two to Spectre Four and Spectre Five –”

The connection fuzzed off into static as Hera became aware of the sound of running footsteps, soft-soled boots coming pell-mell towards her on the pavement. She spun with her blaster up, resting her free hand protectively on Kanan’s chest.

For a moment Hera genuinely thought she was hallucinating.

Cham Syndulla had just appeared at the other end of the street, followed by Hera’s mother Alecto and two other Twi’leks Hera vaguely remembered from her childhood. Hera stared at them, too stunned by their sudden appearance to fire or ask any questions, until Cham dropped to one knee beside her and held out his hand.

“Daddy?” she said, bewildered, before he could speak.

Relief showed on his face. He was older than he had been the last time Hera had seen him anywhere other than on the Imperial terrorist watch list, a sharp-featured Twi’lek male with orange skin. “Hera,” he said in Twi’leki, “come with us. Come with us now.”

As Hera stared at him, her mother crouched down on his other side, effectively backing Hera against Kanan’s unconscious body. Her gaze was fixed on Hera, her expression so intense that Hera almost flinched in reaction. She looked back and forth between her parents, unable to comprehend their presence here.

“Mama…?”

Her mother’s hands were shaking a little as she reached for Hera, pushing down her still raised blaster. She didn’t let go of Hera after her blaster was pointed at the pavement, curling her green fingers around Hera’s gray-sleeved wrist. “Come with us,” she said, in the same language that Cham had spoken in. “Now. We have to go now.”

“What are you doing here?” Hera said in Basic, but before either of her parents could respond Kanan groaned, stirring a little under Hera’s hand. Hera pulled free of her mother and turned back to him, setting her blaster down on the ground so that she could lay her hand alongside his face. “Shh, love, you’re all right, you’ll be all right. It’s just a scratch.”

His armor must have caught most of the energy pulse and transmuted it to a stun blast; it was rare but not unheard of, and Hera had seen it happen before. That would translate to bruising and maybe some nerve damage beneath his armor, but that was preferable to what would have happened had Kanan not been wearing it. Hera would have to take his armor off to see just how bad his injury was, though, and she didn’t want to do that while the shooter was still out there.

His eyelashes fluttered slightly. She saw his lips shape her name, then his face went slack again as he dropped back into unconsciousness.

Behind her, her mother said abruptly, “He’s still alive.”

Hera heard the sound of a blaster clearing its holster and turned quickly, one hand still on Kanan’s chest. Her father had drawn his blaster and was pointing it at Kanan’s head. “Not for long.”

“No!” Hera said sharply, and grabbed for the blaster. It went off with a sharp retort as she jerked Cham’s hand away from Kanan, the laser bolt going wild. There was a brief struggle before Alecto and the other Twi’lek woman, her mother’s cousin Sinthya, caught her and pulled her back, dragging her away from Kanan and her father. Hera could still see her blaster on the pavement next to Kanan where she had put it down, along with the limp shape of one her gloves, somehow lost during the scuffle. It lay on the pavement like a dead bird.

Cham had a fresh set of scratches on his face when he reclaimed the blaster he had dropped. “It will be over soon, Hera,” he said, and pressed the blaster barrel to Kanan’s temple.

Hera screamed, full-throated and piercing, a sound that should have brought any stormtrooper in hearing distance running, if there were any to hear. Her mother clapped a hand over her mouth, wincing when Hera bit her but not letting go.

“You’ll thank us for this when he’s dead, Hera,” she said against Hera’s right ear-cone. “The mind trick will wear off then –”

Hera slammed a heel down on her mother’s instep, and when Alecto’s grip loosened in response, jabbed a sharp elbow into Sinthya’s stomach, making the other woman reel back. Hera twisted free of her mother, hearing her gasp in shock and pain as Hera nearly pulled her arm out of the socket. Her father barely had time to start up before Hera swung in a roundhouse kick, knocking the blaster out of his grasp.

Sinthya and the other Twi’lek – a blue-skinned male whose name Hera couldn’t remember – had both drawn their blasters and were pointing them at her. Her mother was clutching at her injured shoulder, her expression astonished.

“Hera?” she said, as if she couldn’t quite believe what had happened.

“Put those down!” Cham said sharply, gesturing at Sinthya and the other Twi’lek. He looked at Hera and said, “Hera, _freykaa_ , listen to me –”

Hera leaned down and drew her holdout blaster from its boot holster, clicking the safety off as she pointed it at her father. “Get away from him.”

Cham blinked once, his lekku twitching in an expression of something that Hera didn’t know how to interpret anymore. “Hera –”

“You’re a traitor, a terrorist, and a murderer. Get away from him or I’ll spare the Empire the expense of an execution.” Where were the blasted stormtroopers? At the very least there should have been security patrols around here; Hera had authorized the use of AT-DPs herself. And by now a gunship should have been on its way from the Imperial Complex.

“Hera, you’re not going to shoot me,” Cham said, raising his empty hands.

Hera could feel the blasters pointed at her, could see her mother’s shocked, horrified expression. “Get away from my partner or you can find out,” she said, and when he didn’t move, fired.

The bolt blackened the pavement near his feet. Cham didn’t flinch, but his lekku twitched again, and Hera’s mother said, her voice rising, “Hera, what are you _doing_? Let us help you!”

Hera glanced at her. “I don’t want –”

She had taken her attention off her father for only an instant, but it was long enough. Cham lunged for her, twisting the blaster out of her hand and pulling her against him, her back flat against his chest. Hera screamed in protest, struggling in vain to get free, but her father’s grip was too tight.

“It’s over!” he said. “Hera, it’s over. We’ll kill him and take you home and it will be over, Hera. Whatever he did to you –”

Hera clawed at his restraining arm across her chest. “He never did anything to me!” she spat, seeing her mother put a hand on her still-holstered blaster and step towards Kanan’s too-still body. He hadn’t moved at all. “He loves me!”

“A being like that can’t love,” her mother said, turning on her suddenly. “You only think he loves you. He did something to you, made you think he cares for you, and then used you for his own pleasure –”

Hera glared at her, straining against her father’s grip. “Kanan never laid a hand on me that I didn’t want him to,” she snarled. “You don’t know anything about him! You don’t know anything about me!”

Her mother took two long strides towards them and caught Hera’s shoulders between her hands, forcing Hera to look at her. “You’re my daughter,” she said. “You’re my child. I carried you in my body. That’s all I need to know.”

“You don’t have the right to know anything about me!” Hera said. “You left me!”

Her mother flinched as though Hera had slapped her. Sinthya, whose blaster had been pointed at Kanan, looked up suddenly, her expression utterly horrified. Hera felt her father’s grip tighten.

“You left me there,” Hera said through her teeth. “You left me there and you never came for me, you don’t get to make decisions about who I am.”

“That’s not fair!” her mother said, her eyes going wide. “We looked for you – we spent years searching for you –”

“Well, you should have tried harder,” Hera said. She dug her nails into her father’s arm, trying and failing to make him let go of her. “I wasn’t that hard to find.”

Kanan had found her, after all, and he hadn’t even been looking.

Her mother’s grip tightened on her shoulders. “Hera, I will make this right, I swear –”

“It was right before you came here!” Hera snapped. “Let go of me, blast it! Whatever you want from me, it’s too late now, it’s been too late for years. I’m not that little girl anymore, I haven’t been her since the colony burned and you let them take me!”

In the distance, _finally_ , Hera heard the faint whine of an approaching gunship.

The others heard it too, because they looked up quickly in the direction the sound had come from. Sinthya said, “Our window’s closing, Alecto. Stun her and kill him and let’s get out of here.”

Hera couldn’t read the expression on her mother’s scarred face and couldn’t remember how to interpret the slump of her lekku, but after a moment she let go of Hera and drew her blaster. She turned towards Kanan, who hadn’t so much as twitched through all the shouting.

Desperate, Hera threw herself against her father’s restraining arm and snarled, “If you harm him I swear on the Emperor’s head I’ll have you flayed alive, I swear it.”

Her mother turned back to her, her lekku flying with the force of the motion. “Why?” she demanded. “He hurt you! He made you into –”

“He didn’t make me into anything!” Hera screamed at her. “I recruited him!”

Hera’s father let go of her so abruptly that Hera staggered and fell forward onto her hands and knees, her one bare palm scraping painfully over the pavement and her lekku slumping over her shoulders. Everything seemed to have frozen, the whine of the approaching gunship faded to white noise in the background, so that the only sound Hera could hear clearly was her own breath dragging at her throat.

Then Cham said, his voice completely blank with shock, “You did what?”

“I recruited him,” Hera repeated to the pavement in front of her, her throat raw. She wanted everyone else in the galaxy to go away; she wanted Kanan and the safety of her ship. “Not to be an Inquisitor. I didn’t know he was a Jedi then. I found him when I was on assignment – when I was on my first assignment – and I wanted him, I wanted him more than I’ve ever wanted anything in my life, and I thought he could serve his Empire, so I recruited him. When my lord found out what he was, he gave Kanan a choice between – he gave Kanan a choice. He chose me. _He_ chose _me_. You left me,” she said, pushing herself up to her knees and glaring at her parents, “and he chose me.”

The gunship was close enough now that Hera could see its lights in the dark sky. Sinthya’s gaze flicked up to it – Alecto and the other Twi’lek male were still staring at Hera – and she said reluctantly, “We need to go now, Cham. Stun her –”

Her father was still staring at her with huge, horrified eyes, his hands and lekku both hanging limp.

Hera lunged for her fallen blaster, scrambling upright and taking a step back towards Kanan. Sinthya raised her own blaster reflexively before Alecto pushed it down, moving to stand between Hera and her cousin.

“Hera, come with us,” she said. She holstered her blaster and took a step towards Hera, holding her hand out. She had to raise her voice to be heard over the approaching sound of the gunship. “Come with us now. This is where you belong, Hera –”

Hera lowered her blaster and fired, the blast darkening the paving stones by her feet. Her mother flinched back, startled. Hera raised her blaster again, aiming center of mass, the way her instructors at the Academy had taught her. “Get out. Or the next shot won’t be a warning.”

“We’re your family!” her mother said, distress written all over her face as Sinthya caught her wrist in her free hand.

“No. _He’s_ family. You just have some of the same DNA. Now get away from me!”

There was a buzz of sound as the gunship came into sight over the buildings just north of them. Sinthya grabbed her cousin by the arm, pulling at her in an attempt to get her to run. Alecto said, “I’m not leaving without my daughter!”

Cham was standing completely still, something like utter disbelief on his face. “You don’t know what you’re saying, Hera. That Inquisitor –”

“I don’t want you!” Hera snapped.

Cham shook his head. “You don’t know what you want.” He took a step towards her, stretching his hand out.

Hera fired.

The blast took him through the right shoulder. Cham jerked with the force of it and nearly fell; the other Twi’lek man caught him, starting to raise his own blaster before Cham slapped it down. “Hera!” he said, his voice tight with pain.

Hera set her jaw. Her grip on her blaster didn’t waver, and something about her expression must have told her father that her next shot would be a killing one.

As the gunship’s spotlights flooded the streets, the Twi’leks began to back away, then to run, barely ahead of the lights. Only Cham and Alecto hesitated at the end of the street, looking back before Hera turned away. She holstered her blaster and knelt back down next to Kanan, laying a hand on his chest just to feel him breathing. She was barely aware of the gunship settling down in the street until Sabine came running up to her, Zeb hot on her heels and a medic just behind him.

“Hera! What happened, what –” The words trailed off as Sabine saw Kanan. “Is he –”

“He’s alive,” Hera said. She didn’t know what compelled her to add, “I didn’t see the sniper. But he’s alive.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to my beta Xena, and to Kablob, who did a first-read on the Ahsoka scenes.
> 
> For new readers, I do daily progress reports over on Tumblr, under the tag "[daily fic snippet](http://bedlamsbard.tumblr.com/tagged/daily-fic-snippet)," if you want to keep track of what I'm working on or get a hint of what's happening in the next chapter or two.


	3. Razor's Edge

Anywhere in the galaxy, Hera knew, a Twi’lek – especially a Twi’lek woman – in an Imperial uniform would be noticed. But the counterpoint to that was that a Twi’lek dressed in anything from an exotic dancer’s costume to a Mirialan’s enveloping robes would go unnoticed on every planet, moon, and space station from the Deep Core to Wild Space, making her nearly invisible when she wanted to be.

She had spent enough time in civilian clothes over the years not to feel unduly uncomfortable in them now, but there was always a moment during an op when the reality of not being in uniform got to her and Hera felt her breath catch and her heartrate speed up. When she had been in the Imperial Academy on Serenno, she had broken records getting demerits for being out of uniform, since no matter how hard she had tried she hadn’t been able to fit her headtails into her cadet’s helmet. Eventually someone had produced an altered helmet for her, but half the time she had gotten demerits from the various instructors at the Academy anyway. Most of them hadn’t thought that a tailhead like her should have been allowed into the Imperial service.

 _Except I was. And I worked for it every blasted day._ All those years – the Academy, ISB specialist training, what had been done to Kanan, every day in the field after that – all of it leading up to the moment last year when she had finally been given permission to form her own team.

All of it leading up to the moment when a blaster bolt had punched a hole in Kanan’s armor and her entire world had turned upside down.

Ten years. Ten _years_. Ten years and a blaster bolt two inches from her partner’s heart, as if a few pints of shared blood should have been enough to erase the reality of what Hera was.

Sometimes Hera, who usually considered herself fair and even-minded, understood the desire to do murder.

She looked up as Zeb came back to the table she was sitting at, glowering into a nearly full glass of sweet cider. “Anything?”

He shook his head, dropping into the other chair and stretching his long legs out. “Couple of them heard the ruckus once we arrived, but no one saw the shooter. Didn’t even know that it was an Imperial that got hit.”

Hera rubbed a hand over her forehead. This was the twelfth scum-bucket cantina they had been in since leaving the Imperial Complex that morning – Kanan still lying unconscious in the medbay – and so far all they had been able to determine was that there was far too much street violence in Zalxuc City, with or without the cartels trying to blow each other up. No one even batted an eye at a little blasterfire in the night, especially when it came from the type of neighborhood she and Kanan had been in.

Of course, the real problem was that there wasn’t anything to find. But Zeb didn’t know that, and Hera wasn’t exactly about to tell him either.

She dug her closed-clipped nails into the scarred wood of the tabletop, risking splinters but needing _something_ to take her frustration out on.

“Hera,” Zeb said slowly, “I don’t mind going to every cantina in the city, but I don’t think we’re going to get anything there either. Whoever took that shot at Kanan isn’t hanging around here. Either they’re holed up with one of the cartels or it was an offworld contractor who left already or who’s waiting for another chance at him.”

“They had their chance to take a second shot,” Hera said, more sharply than she had intended. “You and the locals certainly took your time getting there.”

Zeb swung his head around to frown at her, but he couldn’t argue with that. “You want to move on?”

In response, Hera dug a credchip out of her pocket and tossed it down on the table beside her barely-touched drink, pushing her chair back as she stood up. Zeb sighed, drained his glass, and followed her.

“Kanan’s going to be all right,” he said as they made their way out of the cantina into the damp heat of the street. It was still light out, though the sun was starting to dip towards the horizon, and there were plenty of other pedestrians around them. No one looked twice at the Twi’lek and the Lasat. “He’s pretty tough, for a human.”

“I know,” Hera said, feeling her mouth tighten. “Why do you think I’m here instead of in the medbay with him?”

She felt Zeb’s gaze heavy on the back of her neck. “Why didn’t the shooter take a second shot, Hera?” he said after a moment.

“I don’t know. Maybe they thought he was already dead when he hit the ground.” Even saying the words made her hands clench into fists.

It wasn’t the first time a sniper had taken a shot at Kanan. An ISB sniper had done so six years ago, a warning to Hera from her handler of what would happen if Kanan left the Empire’s service. Kanan hadn’t been an Inquisitor then. He hadn’t even known yet that Hera was an Imperial agent.

It hurt to think about how young they had been then.

There had been other occasions since, but somehow this felt like that first time. Only last night the shot had actually struck home; that first time it had just been a warning, close enough to startle Kanan and terrify Hera.

“Zeb, do you ever think about your people?” Hera said in a sudden rush. She didn’t look at him, not wanting to see his reaction to the question.

There was a beat of hesitation before Zeb replied slowly, “Every day.”

What had happened to Zeb’s homeworld, Lasan, was one of the great tragedies of the rise of the Empire. Unlike Hera’s homeworld, Lasan had risen all at once against the Empire and had justly been put down, but one of the officers involved in the Scouring of Lasan had had a vindictive streak; nearly the entire population had been slaughtered. Even Zeb didn’t know if any Lasats other than he had survived.

Hera pressed her lips together and said quickly, “That was unfair. I’m sorry.”

Zeb quickened his pace slightly so that they were walking beside each other. Hera raised her gaze to him; he was frowning a little, purple-furred face creased in thought. It hadn’t quite been a year since she and Kanan had found him in a cantina not much different from the one they had just left, only a few months after she had been given permission to form her own team. Hera’s handler had later made it very clear to her that one of the last remaining Lasats in the galaxy had not been what the ISB brass had had in mind.

“Sometimes I wonder what my people would think of me,” Zeb said eventually. “We fought against the Empire – you know that. You know that I fought against the Empire.”

Hera nodded a little. Everyone on her crew – with the exception of Chopper – had reason to hate the Empire; all of them had, at one time or another, borne arms against it. And now they fought under its banner, for good or for ill.

_For good. Always for good. For peace, and stability, and for the innocents who cannot defend themselves and who rely on people like us, the people who are willing to shed blood, both our own or the enemy’s, in service of the greater good._

It was what separated the soldiers of the Empire from the scattered groups of terrorists that plagued it like sand-flies.

_Terrorists like my parents…_

Zeb said something and Hera blinked. “What?”

He gave her a concerned look. “My people are gone,” he said slowly. “My people – and my world – are gone. The Empire did that, and nothing I do, or that anyone else does, will ever bring them back. I could kill Emperor Palpatine –”

Hera raised an eyebrow.

“– and that wouldn’t change anything.”

“Please tell me you haven’t actually thought about that,” Hera said.

“Not seriously. Doubt I could get anywhere near him, for one.”

Hera raised a hand to her forehead. “Zeb…”

He slanted a glance at her. “Palpatine’s just one man, Hera. Do you remember what you told me when you and Kanan first recruited me?”

“I said a lot of things to you,” Hera said. After they had met Zeb and the subsequent series of misadventures that had followed that encounter, she and Kanan had spent a long time talking it over before Hera had made her pitch. Part of that had involved her being the one to make the offer, rather than Kanan; Inquisitors didn’t exactly make good recruiters, even if Kanan could be _very_ convincing under the right circumstances. Zeb hadn’t wanted to be recruited, especially by a couple of Imperials.

“One in particular.” He scratched at his jaw, his eyes narrowed. “You told me that it wasn’t an individual who had destroyed Lasan, it was a regime. And you were right – the Empire destroyed Lasan. Someone gave the order for those T-7s to be used, but that wouldn’t have happened if the Empire hadn’t given them the power to do that and if the Empire hadn’t had the blasted things sitting around anyway. You told me that I could hang around the Rim skulking in cantinas, living off the memory of my people’s pain, or I could do something about it.” Zeb laughed a little. “I thought you sounded like some kind of rebel.”

“I’m not a rebel,” Hera said, more sharply than she had intended.

“’course you aren’t. But sometimes you sound like one.”

Hera rubbed a hand over her forehead. “Is this supposed to be comforting?”

“No.”

Hera stared at him. “No?”

“No,” Zeb repeated. “You said that to me too. ‘The truth isn’t comforting’ – or something like that, anyway. What happened to Lasan was a tragedy, what happened to Kashyyyk was a tragedy, what happened to Ryloth –”

Hera’s head snapped around so fast she nearly dislocated her neck. “I don’t talk about Ryloth.”

He shrugged. “People die because of the Empire. That’s what you told me. They die because they think they can fight the Empire – because the Clone Wars made it seem like the only way to deal with a situation they don’t like is to try and get out of it. And they take a lot of innocent people with them because the big brass in the Empire came out of the Clone Wars and they don’t know how to deal with a problem without firebombing it from orbit or trying out the newest, shiniest toy on it. And the only way to keep that from happening is to put down those problems before the Empire decides that the easiest solution is to send in the guys with the bombs. If we do our job right, then nobody but the guilty has to get hurt – no one else has to suffer the way Lasan did. And I think my people would understand that. So that’s why I work for the Empire now.” He dropped a heavy hand on her shoulder. “That what you wanted to know?”

“I –” Hera looked up at him, lost for words. If there was anyone on her team who might understand, it was Zeb, whose world had been ripped apart as surely as Hera’s had, but who had still decided that justice took precedence over vengeance. Sabine had come out of the Academy, albeit with complications, and Kanan –

Things were different for Inquisitors.

She reached up and squeezed his hand. “You’re a good man, Zeb, you know that?”

“I’m all right,” he said. He patted her shoulder. “Could be better. Could be a lot worse, too.”

“Couldn’t we all.” Hera shoved her hands into the pockets of her utility trousers as Zeb let go of her.

“Does this have something to do with Kanan getting shot?” Zeb asked after a moment.

“No. Yes. I don’t know. Zeb –”

“All right,” he said quickly. “I’ll let it go. This time.”

Hera nodded, studying the pavement in front of them. “Let’s try a few more cantinas,” she said. “Someone must have heard something.”

*

Kanan Jarrus regained consciousness between one heartbeat and the next, instinct sending him reaching for a lightsaber that wasn’t there. Pain exploded across his chest an instant later, his left arm not responding even as he grabbed for the Force with his right.

“Whoa, Kanan!”

There was a clatter of a chair falling over and Kanan belatedly opened his eyes to see Sabine on her feet beside him, one hand at her throat and the other held out in front of her as though to ward him off. For a moment Kanan just stared at her, unable to reconcile her presence with what his brain insisted _had_ to be happening and where he had to be, then the white and gray sterility of the room they were in penetrated and he opened his fist.

Sabine staggered back, both her hands going to her throat as she gasped for breath. She stared at him with huge, horrified eyes, apparently too stunned to say anything.

“I’m sorry –” Kanan rasped. Wincing, he pushed himself upright with his good hand, feeling the sheets crinkle beneath his palm. His left arm hung useless at his side; he couldn’t feel it at all. The pain started near the left side of his chest and radiated outwards, terminating somewhere near his shoulder. The last thing he remembered – “Where’s Hera?”

Sabine coughed and dropped her hands from her throat, though a moment later she reached up again to prod at it gingerly. “She’s – she went with Zeb to see if she could find out who shot you.”

“I got shot?” Kanan touched the bandage on his otherwise bare chest as Sabine righted the chair she had knocked over.

“Apparently they don’t teach you how to duck in Inquisitor school.”

“I must have flunked that class.” Kanan kept his tone light, but he was still too shaken to conceal his reaction to the words, and Sabine gave him a sharp look. “Are you all right?” he asked her to change the subject. “Seriously, Sabine, I’m so –”

“I’m fine,” Sabine said quickly. She pulled open the high collar of the gray uniform jacket she was wearing to show him her unmarked throat. “See, no bruises. I’m fine. Just surprised. I hope you don’t wake Hera up like that.”

“I try and avoid it,” Kanan said. He ran his good hand through his loose hair, glancing around the room – a private room in the Imperial Complex’s medcenter, by the looks of it. Kanan generally tried to avoid the necessity of medical attention, but he or Hera had needed it enough times to recognize an Imperial medcenter when he saw one. Nobody wanted an Inquisitor in with the rank and file, which explained the private room.

Sabine didn’t bother to straighten her collar, leaving the flap of her jacket hanging open as she leaned over to pour him a cup of water from the pitcher sitting on the bedside table. Kanan accepted it gratefully, nodding thanks and pretending not to notice as she pulled back a little too quickly, liquid slopping over the rim onto his fingers.

The water was flat, with the faint chemical aftertaste that came from the pipes in Zalxuc City for no reason that he had been able to determine, but at the moment it could have been liquid gold. Kanan drank half of it, considered apologizing again, then said instead, “What happened?”

“Sniper took a shot at you while you and Hera were out last night,” Sabine said, resting her elbows on her knees as she leaned forward in her chair. “Hera’s fine,” she added before he could ask. “I guess the shooter was more interested in you than her, and she called in for a medevac.”

“Since she’s not here, I guess I’m fine?” Kanan said dubiously, setting the cup down to poke at the bandage again.

Sabine rolled her eyes. “Armor caught most of it. The med droids say that there’s some superficial nerve damage, but not enough to make it worth dunking you in a bacta tank and it will heal eventually. You probably shouldn’t try moving your left arm for a couple of days.”

“Yeah, I already tried that,” Kanan said dryly. “What’s with the monong suit?”

Sabine pulled at the collar of her much-despised ISB uniform like it was choking her, making an expression that suggested that it was, in fact, doing so. Her indigo- and amber- dyed hair was a garish splash against the sterile white of the room; she had already managed to lose the cap that went with the uniform and her short gloves were tucked through her belt. The tabs that marked her as a probationary agent were crooked.

“Well, you know the bucketheads around here,” she said. “No appreciation for art. Mine’s the wrong kind of bucket if I want to actually stay in the Imperial Complex for more than five minutes.” Sabine made scare-quotes with paint-flecked fingers. “According to the commandant, I’m a ‘poor representation of the Empire’s dignity’ and ‘setting a bad example for the cadets.’”

“Yeah, I know how much you care about what the cadets think,” Kanan said. He drank the rest of the water, then put the cup down again. “Where’s Hera?” he asked again, hearing a plaintive note in his voice.

“She’s fine,” Sabine said for the third or fourth time; Kanan had lost count. “She took Zeb and went out in civvies to knock heads together until someone spills the beans on who took a shot at you.”

Kanan picked at the edge of the bacta bandage on his chest, then forced himself to stop, closing his hand into a fist. “Shouldn’t you be with them?”

“Hera didn’t want you to wake up alone,” Sabine said, her face softening a little. “I guess my bedside manner is better than Chopper’s, though that’s not really saying much. And the commandant doesn’t actually want to put an armed guard on me when I’m around here, unlike Zeb. You know how the stormies are.”

Yeah, Kanan knew how the stormies were. Probably better than Sabine did; she had still been on the fast track for officer’s training at the Imperial Academy on Mandalore not even a year ago now. Cadets at that level didn’t have a whole lot of interaction with regular stormtroopers.

Kanan, on the other hand, had had more interaction with stormtroopers than he liked. On both sides of the field.

He worked his right shoulder experimentally, feeling it twinge, but he’d had plenty worse before. “Where are my clothes?”

“Not here,” Sabine said. “You just got shot. You shouldn’t be going anywhere.”

“You said the damage was superficial!” Kanan protested.

“I said it was _nerve damage_!” She poked a finger at him. “I’m sure Hera wouldn’t mind if I cuffed you to the bed to keep you from going anywhere.”

For a moment Kanan’s breath caught in his throat; he heard the words come out but wasn’t actually aware of saying them. “That would be a very bad idea.”

Sabine flinched for just an instant, long enough for Kanan to wish that he hadn’t said anything, but her voice was steady as she said, “Or I could not do that.”

“Or you could give me my clothes,” Kanan made himself say. He prodded at his left shoulder with his good hand before adding, “And a sling.”

Sabine hesitated. “I think the chest plate’s shot – uh, literally.”

“I’ll make do,” Kanan said.

“You know a medical droid’s going to tell you the exact same thing that I just did, right?” Sabine said, unfolding herself from her chair. She had slung her gunbelt over the back of it, the tan-colored nerf-leather and brightly painted blasters as incongruous as her hair.

“Yeah,” Kanan said, flipping the sheet back and swinging his legs over the side of the hospital bed. “I know. That’s why I didn’t say to go get one.”

Sabine had to help him into his Inquisitor’s blacks, grumbling the entire time about the fact that he didn’t have a uniform that was easier to get in and out of. Kanan didn’t bother pointing out that that had been the point; he hadn’t picked his uniform and if he had, he wouldn’t have picked this one. Sabine didn’t know anything about that.

It would have been more comfortable – and probably smarter – to leave off his armor entirely, but without it his blacks looked too much like his old Jedi robes for comfort; Kanan needed the security of the Imperial cog on his shoulder, even if it was just one shoulder. He liked the asymmetrical look anyway.

He hooked his lightsaber onto his belt as Sabine handed it to him, then settled his bad arm into the sling. He waved off the pain tablets that Sabine offered.

“You got _shot_ ,” she said, thrusting them at him. “You don’t need to prove how tough you are, you know.”

“I don’t like not being in my own head,” Kanan said firmly. _Or not knowing whether what I’m feeling is real_ , he didn’t add; there were a lot of things Sabine didn’t need to know.

Sabine shook her head, tucking the pain tablets inside her jacket. She picked up her gunbelt and buckled it around her waist as she and Kanan started towards the door. It slid open before they reached it, letting in a medical droid that somehow managed to convey complete disapproval despite the lack of facial features.

“Inquisitor, you should not be out of bed,” it informed him. “You were severely injured and require medical attention –”

“I had medical attention,” Kanan said. “I’m fine.”

“I must recommend against –”

“Recommendation noted,” Kanan said. He glanced at Sabine, who had crossed her arms over her chest and was smirking. “Multiple times.”

“Inquisitor –”

Kanan pushed past the droid into the corridor, which was just as bland and sterile as the room they had just left. Sabine trailed after him.

“So?” she asked. “What now? If you call Hera she’s just going to tell you to go back to bed.”

“I know,” Kanan said. He worked his right arm experimentally, but he knew better than to go out in the field injured if there was any way around it. “Forget about whoever shot me. Let’s go talk to the guys we picked up last – night? How long was I out?”

“Ten hours. The med droids put you under for a while, too, so –” Sabine looked at her wrist, where her gauntlet display normally would have been, then scowled. “Call it fifteen hours all together?”

“Great,” Kanan said. “That’s just great.” He ran a hand through his hair again; neither he nor Sabine had been able to find a hairband and it hung loose around his face, catching on the high neck guard of his right pauldron when he turned his head. “Well, it gives them time to stew. Tell Chop to meet us down there. The Emperor brought us here for a reason; let’s go do our job.”

*

There was a subdued air to the _Razor’s Edge_ as the converted freighter flashed out of hyperspace just beyond the fleet perimeter. Cham was in the cockpit with Sinthya and Teah Far, the ship’s Pantoran co-pilot, strapped into one of the two passenger seats. The other, which Alecto had occupied when they had left the fleet, was empty.

They were close enough that he could see the whole fleet from here, a somewhat ragtag collection of several dozen starships – former warships like the _Forlorn Hope_ , converted freighters like this one, old pleasure and passenger craft, working ships of all stripes, and a few smaller hunter-killers that were dwarfed by the larger vessels. The combat air patrol – this shift made up of two Headhunters and two Torrents – flitted around the outer edge of the fleet, barely visible by the naked eye at this distance.

After their clearance codes were verified, the _Razor’s Edge_ slipped in amongst the other ships of the fleet to land in one of the _Forlorn Hope_ ’s massive landing bays. Cham undid his safety straps with his one good hand; the ship only had a crew of twelve and didn’t rate its own medical droid, but it did have a medic. Cham had gotten his blaster wound patched up while the last canisters of bacta were being loaded onboard. At least they had gotten _something_ out of this mission, even if it wasn’t what anyone had been hoping for when they had left the fleet.

The crew was already involved in unloading the bacta as he made his way through the ship, pausing for a moment before the closed door to Alecto’s cabin before going on. The real reason they had gone to Thyferra on such short notice was a closely held secret; Gobi and Teah, with familiar efficiency, had come up with a cover story that had resulted in twenty barrels of high-grade bacta appearing in the hold. Since the fleet was perennially short of supplies, Cham hadn’t bothered asking how they had made that happen. He didn’t know whether or not Sinthya had told Teah about what had happened with Hera, though he suspected she had; Sinthya told Teah most things. At least Cham knew that Teah was discreet enough not to mention it to anyone else.

He emerged from the _Razor’s Edge_ onto the always-busy deck of the landing bay. Now that the freighter had landed, business as usual had recommenced; there was one other small freighter on the opposite side of the bay, along with several shuttles and half a dozen starfighters of various types.

“Uncle Cham?”

His nephew Doriah Syndulla had been perched cross-legged on top of a crate; as Cham approached he hopped up and came over to meet him.

Doriah was a green-skinned Twi’lek male in his early twenties with faint striping across his lekku and shoulders, barely visible except in direct light. There were cross-hatched patches of scar tissue on his forehead and on the back of one hand, now covered up by his fingerless gloves. When he opened his mouth, Cham could see his teeth, filed to sharp points; Doriah had done that after he and his cousin Xiaan had escaped from Imperial custody. That had been six years ago now.

“What happened to your arm?” Doriah asked, tucking his thumbs into his blaster belt.

“I got shot,” Cham said.

Doriah was obviously dying to ask further questions, but instead he just said, “Your friend’s back. Mishaan sent me to tell you.”

“My friend?” Cham said, not understanding.

“Fulcrum. She’s in bay two again.”

“She’s here?” Cham said, startled. He glanced back over his shoulder at the _Razor’s Edge_ , where Teah and Gobi were standing together talking in lowered voices while crewmen rolled canisters of bacta down the ramp. Alecto was nowhere in sight.

“That’s what I just said, Uncle. She got here a couple of hours ago.” Doriah eyed him, then added hopefully, “Can I meet her?”

“No,” Cham said firmly. “Go help your aunt.”

Doriah sighed and started to trot off towards the ship. He was only a few months younger than Hera, and looking at him now Cham could see the hard edges that they both shared. More souvenirs from the Empire.

After a few steps Doriah stopped and turned around. “Uncle?”

“Yes?”

“There’s a rumor that the reason you and Aunt Sinthya and Aunt Alecto left – that you had a line on some of the other people from the colony. Is that true?” There was something wild on Doriah’s face, a kind of desperate hope in his brown eyes as he stared at Cham.

“It was a rumor,” Cham said, not bothering to specify which rumor it had been. He took a step towards the hangar doors, then changed his mind and went back to the _Razor’s Edge_ , passing Doriah as he did so.

Sinthya was coming out of one of the cabins as he turned into the crew quarters. As he stepped towards her, she stopped him with one hand on his good shoulder.

“I wouldn’t go in there if I was you,” she said, pushing him back slightly so that the door could slide shut behind her. “My cousin doesn’t want to talk to anyone.”

Cham shut his eyes for a moment. He could still see Hera, the expression of sheer terror on her face when he had put his blaster to the Inquisitor’s head, the icy determination before she had pulled the trigger on him. _I don’t want you._

She had said the same thing to him back on Ryloth, just before he had sent her away to the colony. Before yesterday, it had been the last thing she had ever said to him. It was still the last thing she had ever said to him.

Cham opened his eyes again and looked at Sinthya, whose expression was more tired than anything else. “I’ll take that risk,” he told her. He rested a hand briefly on her shoulder, then stepped around her and touched the control for the door.

The lights were off inside the small cabin, which had a bunk on either side of the room and a small table set into the wall between them. A little light came in from the hallway behind Cham, his shadow looming large on the floor before vanishing as the door closed. In the darkness, he could see Alecto’s eyes gleaming, reflecting what little light there was in the room; Twi’leks couldn’t see in pitch dark, but they came fairly close.

She was sitting on one of the bunks with her back to the wall and her knees drawn up to her chest. She had raised her chin a little as Cham came in, but when she recognized him she put her head back down, rubbing a hand over her forehead. He could see the dim shapes of her boots and blaster belt discarded on the floor by the bunk as he approached. There was a disassembled blaster and cleaning cloth on the bed beside her, as if she had gotten distracted halfway through.

“Alecto.”

She didn’t raise her gaze. “You left our child there, Cham. I don’t think I can look at you right now.”

“Alecto,” Cham said again.

“Do you really think that just by saying my name over and over again I’ll be any more likely to listen to you?”

Cham sighed and sat down on the bunk beside her, starting to reach for her hand before thinking better of it. She had wrapped her arms around her drawn-up legs like a child, making herself small. “Alecto,” he said for the third time.

“Sinthya was right,” Alecto said after a moment. “You should have stunned her and killed the Inquisitor – you should have brought our daughter home.”

“Stunned her, the way the Empire took her from you?”

Alecto’s head jerked up, her lekku bouncing. “How dare you,” she said, lips drawing back from her teeth in a snarl. “How dare you, Cham Syndulla –”

“I want my daughter to come home because she wants to,” Cham said. “Not because I stunned her and put her in another prison.”

“The Empire will never allow that to happen!” Alecto said. “She doesn’t think she’s in a prison, she doesn’t realize –” She rubbed at her throat, unmarked after so many years free of the Empire, but which had been raw when she had first joined the fleet. “You don’t need a collar to enslave someone.”

“I know.”

Alecto looked at him for a moment, then put her forehead back down against her knees. Her voice muffled, she said, “Ten _years_ , Cham. Ten years the Empire has had my child.”

“She’s my child too, Alecto.”

“After Doriah and Xiaan came back, I thought –” Her breath caught. “I thought that nothing could be worse than that. Sometimes I wished that she was dead just so she wouldn’t be suffering anymore. And I’m _glad_ –” She pressed her forehead harder against her knees, her lekku sliding forward over her shoulders.

Cham rested a hand on her back. Alecto didn’t flinch away from him, the way she still sometimes did; the Empire had had her for less than a year, but she would bear its scars – and not merely the one on her face – until the day she died.

“Hera isn’t dead,” he said softly. “She lives, her heart beats, she draws breath. She walks free with a blaster in her hand –”

“And the Emperor’s words on her lips,” Alecto said. “And an Inquisitor in her bed. What kind of freedom is that, Cham?”

None at all. Cham knew that as well as she did.

“You should have stunned her,” Alecto said when he didn’t answer. “We’re her family. She would have forgiven us the Inquisitor’s blood.”

“Would you, if our places had been reversed?”

Alecto raised her head, her eyes glinting – reflecting the white emergency lights at the base of the doorway. “He’s an Inquisitor. A fallen Jedi, for whatever that’s worth. Killing him would have done the galaxy a service, and it would have freed our daughter, Cham. But you left her there like she was nothing.”

“That is not true!” Cham said sharply. “Alecto, if she turned a Jedi, then –”

“I don’t care!” Alecto slapped a hand down on the bunk beside her, making the blaster parts jump. “That doesn’t change anything, and if you weren’t a coward –”

Cham felt a muscle in his jaw jump. “Not everything is as simple as you would like it to be.”

Alecto shook her head slowly. “Some days I don’t know you, Cham,” she said. “Some days I don’t know what happened to the man I married.”

Some days I don’t either, he thought, but didn’t say it out loud. Instead he stood up; Alecto’s glare could have burned through solid durasteel. “The reason I came here,” he said, “is because my contact Fulcrum is back. She would only have returned so soon after leaving if she had information.”

“So?”

“Come and talk to her with me,” Cham said. Ahsoka might skin him alive for bringing someone else in without vetting them with her first, but Cham was willing to take that risk. Besides, it was Alecto. Their marriage had taken enough blows over the years that Cham was frankly surprised it hadn’t shattered completely already; he thought that all it would take was one more, and what was happening with Hera could easily be its death knell.

Alecto frowned, more to herself than to Cham. Then she straightened up and swung her legs off the bed, reaching for her boots and blaster belt. “You think Fulcrum is here about Hera?” she asked as she pulled her boots on.

“I think that’s the only thing that would bring her back so soon.” It had only been a few standard days, long enough for both of them to travel halfway across the galaxy and back again, but given that Cham often went weeks without hearing from Ahsoka, the timing was suspicious.

“We found her. We spoke to her. What else could this Fulcrum possibly have to say?”

Cham stepped back from the door to let Alecto precede him out into the corridor. “I don’t know.” 

Alecto’s mouth tightened. “It’s always interesting meeting your friends.”

Sinthya was standing by the ramp as they emerged from the ship, studying a datapad and talking to one of the ship’s doctors, who must have been summoned to deal with the bacta. She glanced up, then blinked as she recognized Alecto. She didn’t speak, but she didn’t have to; her expression said it all.

Cham pretended not to notice as Alecto caught her eye, nodding a greeting to the doctor instead. After a moment where Alecto and Sinthya apparently conducted an entire conversation solely with their eyes, Alecto turned back to him, shoving her hands into the pockets of her jacket. “Well, Cham?”

They didn’t speak as they left the landing bay and headed for the one where Ahsoka had parked her hunter-killer, which was on the opposite side of the _Forlorn Hope_. Cham searched for words, but it was clear that Alecto wasn’t interested in conversation, and he had the feeling that if he said the wrong thing it would be more likely to shatter their fragile détente and send Alecto storming back to the _Razor’s Edge_. They had both carried the ghost of their daughter between them for so long that suddenly having a very real, very alive – and going by their interaction with her, very angry – daughter in the equation was something that Cham thought neither of them quite knew how to deal with.

*

It was late when Hera returned to the Imperial Complex, well past dark. She had left Zeb at the caravanserai where his cover identity was staying; after last night’s raid there was a good chance that that cover had been blown – she doubted there were more than a few dozen Lasats at large in the galaxy, let alone on Thyferra – but Zeb was never comfortable in any Imperial facility, no matter what world they were on. There was no point in pushing him, so Hera didn’t bother trying. Kanan had been the same way until he had gone to Mustafar.

The stormtroopers on duty at the gate recognized her – there was only one Twi’lek in the Imperial service, as far as Hera knew – but made her show her identification anyway, a security check of which Hera approved. This late, the complex was quiet except for the stormtrooper patrols passing through at regular intervals, none of whom bothered her. Hera made her way through small connecting courtyards and empty corridors to the medbay, which boasted the usual assortment of mild injuries and illnesses that cropped up on Imperial bases. Kanan, however, wasn’t in the private room he had been given. Hera stared at the empty bed for several minutes, feeling panic build in her throat before a passing medical droid took pity on her and told her that he had left hours ago. 

That he had talked himself out of the medbay should have been a good sign, since it meant that he was conscious and, presumably, ambulatory, but Hera had built up a fantasy of coming back to sit by his bedside and apologize to him, and it took her a few a moments to get herself back in order. She thanked the droid and left the medbay, heading for the suite they had been given in the complex’s guest quarters and hoping that Kanan was there. The last time he had been injured, after Zeb had joined them but before Sabine had, he had refused to stay in the Imperial Complex and ended up sleeping on the _Ghost_ the remainder of their time onworld.

Kanan had been badly shaken even before he had been shot; Hera hoped that he hadn’t gone back to the _Ghost_. It wasn’t that she minded sleeping on her ship; it was just that she didn’t want to trek all over the entire Imperial Complex to track him down.

Sabine must have been spending the night in the guest quarters too, because one of the other doors in the corridor was marked with an _occupied_ symbol; she had spent the previous two weeks in the same caravanserai as Zeb. It was an unexpected concession; Sabine disliked Imperial facilities almost as much as he did.

Hera swiped her keycard through the reader next to her suite’s door, hearing the lock disengage before it slid open. The entranceway would have been dark for a human, but Hera could see clearly even before the door shut behind her, and she smiled when she saw Kanan’s boots discarded by the wall.

“Kanan?” she called softly, pulling her own boots off and leaving them beside his. She started stripping out of the rest of her clothes as she made her way through the darkened suite towards the bedroom, leaving them in a trail behind her.

“Here.” His voice was sleepy, as though she had woken him. He propped himself up on one elbow as Hera came into the bedroom, blinking at her. “Hey.”

“Hey.” She leaned down to kiss him. “Why aren’t you still in the medbay?”

“Boring.” He smiled against her mouth as Hera twitched the blankets back and climbed onto the bed beside him. “Where were you?”

“Duty called.” Hera ran a hand down his chest, feeling the bandage over the place where he had been shot. “You scared me.”

“I’m fine,” Kanan told her, leaning up to kiss her again. “I’ve had worse.”

“I know,” Hera said, unable to stop her frown. Kanan _had_ had worse. That didn’t make this time any more dire, especially considering –

She stopped that train of thought before it could get started. She knew that Force users couldn’t read minds, not truly, but sometimes Kanan picked up things without meaning to, and this, more than anything else, she didn’t want him to know about.

“Does it hurt?” she said instead, frowning at the bruising that was visible around the edges of the bandage.

“Like I said,” Kanan repeated, “I’ve had worse.”

Hera straightened up. “Did you take any painkillers, Kanan?”

Kanan’s gaze flitted aside. “Like I said, I’ve had worse. Hey, and if you move your hand a little lower, then I’m sure I won’t even noti –”

“Kanan!”

He caught her wrist with his right hand, his grip gentle. “It’s fine. Seriously. I’ve been shot before, I’ll probably be shot again. It’s why I wear armor.”

“I’m not worried about you having been shot,” Hera said, picking at the edge of the bandage before she forced herself to stop. “I’m worried about the fact that you didn’t take anything for the pain. The med droid said that there was nerve damage.”

“Which means that I can’t feel anything,” Kanan said, looking shifty. He pulled her hand up to his face and kissed her fingertips. “Right there, anyway.”

“Somehow I doubt that,” Hera said, but knew better than to press the matter. For all that he had been only too happy to fall into a bottle when she had first met him, she had never known Kanan to touch anything more mind-altering than alcohol; after he had come back from Mustafar he had been wary of even that. No matter how badly injured, he never took anything stronger than the weakest pain tablets onboard the _Ghost_ , and every time seemed to regard that as an admission of failure.

She curled up beside him with her head on his good shoulder, and Kanan put his arm around her. He was a warm, familiar bulwark in the dimly-lit bedroom, smelling faintly of bacta from the bandage – at least, being on Thyferra, it would be the good stuff. All Hera wanted to do was lose herself in him.

 _A being like that can’t love_ , her mother had said, but there had been some days and long years where there had only been two things in the universe that Hera had been certain of: that the Empire had saved her and that Kanan loved her. In those awful months after Kanan had come back from Mustafar, silent and shaven and scarred, she had even doubted the first, but never the second. He had gone to that hell for her; he had come back from it for her. No one, not even Zeb or Sabine, really understood what that meant.

Her parents – stars help her, her _parents_ – certainly never would.

Hera turned her head a little and kissed Kanan’s collarbone, running her tongue over the sharp ridge of bone beneath his skin. She felt him shiver a little, his hand sliding down from her shoulders to the small of her back. “That’s a pretty good painkiller,” he murmured.

“Yeah?” Hera said, nipping lightly at his jaw. She liked the way that Kanan’s hand felt on her waist, big and familiar, his thumb rubbing thoughtfully over the ridges of her spine. She knew every inch of Kanan’s body, every scar and imperfection; she had known him before he went to Mustafar and after he had come back, what had changed and what had stayed the same, and all of it, all of _him_ , was hers.

“Just how badly are you hurt?” she had to ask, leaning up to look at him. Kanan could and would lie under most circumstances, but not to her and not in bed.

“Can’t move my left arm and my chest feels like I’ve been kicked by an eopie,” Kanan said promptly. “My back’s fine, though.”

“Oh, _really_ ,” Hera purred. She kissed Kanan on the mouth, warm and comfortable and familiar, then shifted to settle on top of him, careful not to put any weight on his chest. Hers, she thought. Kanan was hers; the Empire might have put its mark on him, but he was the only thing in the galaxy that had always, unquestionably, been hers. He was the only person in the galaxy that had ever come back to her, and Hera would kill anyone who tried to take him from her again.

She pressed kisses to his mouth and jaw, running her hands down his chest and avoiding the bandage as she did so. Kanan curved his hand over her waist, his thumb stroking in small circles against her skin as he kissed her back. Hera needed him like she needed to breathe, needed to remind herself that he was alive and that he was _hers_. A day ago he had nearly died in the street. She had almost had to watch him die in the street like a –

“Hey.” He let go of her waist to cup her face with his good hand, making her look at him. “I’m here. I’m not going anywhere. Are you all right?”

Hera shut her eyes for a moment, then opened them to meet his worried gaze. “You scared me, love,” she told him. “Don’t you ever do that to me again.”

Kanan’s expression softened. “I didn’t do it on purpose.”

“You’re lucky I know that,” Hera said. She turned her head and kissed the base of his palm. “If you won’t take the blasted painkillers, I guess I could help you with that…” 

“Hera, you can help all you want,” Kanan grinned, and kissed her again.

*

Landing bay two hadn’t been cleared out this time, but there was a diminished presence on the deck – Mishaan must have had to make a call on whether she could leave it completely empty for an undetermined period of time and decided that she couldn’t; there was too much going on onboard the _Forlorn Hope_ to have an area as large as an entire landing bay unoccupied for more than an hour or so. Ahsoka’s ship sat undisturbed off to one side of the main floor, the wings folded up to either side of the main body and the ramp up. As they approached, it went down; a hooded figure appeared in the entrance.

“General Syndulla,” it said.

“I’m sure you remember my wife, Alecto,” Cham said.

For a moment he thought that Ahsoka was going to insist that he send her away, then she sighed and turned, gesturing at them to follow. Alecto glanced at Cham, her eyebrows raised; he just shrugged a little in response.

Ahsoka put her hood back as soon as they were inside, flicking it carefully over the tall tops of her montrals. “We met once, a long time ago,” she said to Alecto. “I doubt you remember – I’m Ahsoka Tano.”

“You’re a Jedi,” Alecto said slowly, her gaze flickering to the lightsabers on Ahsoka’s hips.

“Not anymore,” Ahsoka said. “Come and sit down, both of you.” She glanced at Cham, taking in his right arm in its sling. “What happened to you?”

“My daughter shot me,” Cham said.

Ahsoka blinked. “It sounds like we’ve both had an exciting few days. I’m guessing that she isn’t here?”

Cham shook his head a little. Alecto was looking curiously around the lounge as she slid into a seat behind the table. Cham sat next to her, and Ahsoka sat down on the opposite side of the table.

“Did you see Senator Trayvis’s last broadcast?”

“I’ve been a little busy,” Cham said. “Why?”

“The details aren’t important,” Ahsoka said. “Suffice it to say that I had reason to visit a high-security Imperial prison the other day – the kind of prison where people go when the Empire wants them to completely drop off the map. My droid managed to download some of their files before we had to leave. There’s one in particular that should be of interest to you.”

“Hera,” Alecto said, looking up at her.

“Yes.” Ahsoka took a datapad out and put it on the table, pushing it towards Cham and Alecto. “After the attack on the colony on Zardossa Stix, Hera Syndulla was transferred to an Imperial detainment facility called the Spire on Stygeon Prime. She was being evaluated for something called Project Nemesis.”

“Nemesis…” Alecto frowned, her eyes drifting half-closed. “I’ve heard that name before.”

“If you remember what it was, let me know,” Ahsoka said. “Whatever it is, it isn’t being run out of the Spire; the only information on it that I could find were notations in about sixty inmate files. One of them was Hera’s.”

“Who were the others?” Cham asked.

“Other nonhuman children, mostly teenagers Hera’s age or a little younger,” Ahsoka said. “I recognize a few of the family names. Most of them weren’t deemed suitable for the program and were executed. Twenty-four of them were recommended for transfer from the Spire to a second phase.”

“Second phase of what?” Alecto said.

Ahsoka closed her eyes, her shoulders slumping. “Conditioning,” she said finally, looking up at them. “Brainwashing. There are some video files attached. The Empire was taking the children of known opponents to the Empire – like you – and trying to make perfect Imperial citizens out of them.”

Alecto closed her hands into fists on the side of the table, clenching them so tightly that her knuckles went yellow-green.

Cham surprised himself by how steady his voice was when he said, “To what end? What’s the point of all that?”

“I don’t know,” Ahsoka said. “I couldn’t find that information.” She tapped a finger against the top of the datapad. “Hera was at the Spire for seven months before she was transferred offworld. She would have been fifteen then.”

“Seven months?” Alecto said, her voice so soft Cham could barely make out the words. She looked at Cham, her eyes wide. “She was there when I escaped.”

Cham saw Ahsoka brace her shoulders, her gaze flitting down to the tabletop before she looked up again. “Your escape is in Hera’s file.”

“‘You left me there’,” Alecto whispered. “What Hera said on Thyferra – ‘you left me there.’ Mother of Mountains, they used it against her, they used _me_ against her –” She covered her face with her hands. Cham put a tentative hand on her shoulder and she leaned against him, shaking.

“I’m sorry,” Ahsoka said quietly.

“What else?” Cham made himself ask. “What else did they do to her?”

“For what it’s worth,” Ahsoka said, “it doesn’t seem like she was ever physically harmed.”

Alecto flinched like she had been slapped. Cham just stared at Ahsoka, trying to feel something other than sick despair. The words should have been a relief.

Ahsoka was watching them with sharp blue eyes. When neither of them said anything, she went on, “I think you’ll want to see the rest yourself.” Her gaze flicked down towards the table, then up again. “I’d recommend against watching the vids if I thought you’d listen to me.”

“I’ll take that under advisement,” Cham said, even though Ahsoka had to know that his mind was already made up.

“What happened on Thyferra?”

Cham told her. Ahsoka listened intently, frowning now and then, but she didn’t say anything until Cham had finished speaking. Then she said, “The Inquisitor has a _name_?”

“Kanan,” Cham said, scowling. “Why? Do you know him? She said he used to be a Jedi.”

Ahsoka frowned for a moment, her brows drawn in as thought, then she said, “I don’t recognize the name, at least not without a surname to go with it. The thing is, Cham, that Inquisitors don’t _have_ names. As far as I’m aware, they give their names up when they go the Crucible and they never get them back. That’s why they’re all just called ‘Inquisitor.’”

“The Crucible?” Alecto echoed.

“The Inquisition headquarters and training facility in the Mustafar system,” Ahsoka said. “That’s about all I know about it. Are you _sure_ he was an Inquisitor, Cham?”

“Yes. And you saw the other vid – the one you brought me. Is there any doubt?”

“I didn’t think so before, but –” She bit her lip. “I’ve just never heard of an Inquisitor keeping their name. Especially one who used to be a Jedi.” She rubbed at the side of her jaw with her thumb. “That explains what the Inquisitor I encountered on Stygeon Prime said, though. I thought it was just – before he died, I asked him about the Inquisitor with Hera, and he said something about looking for Jedi. He must have known that this Kanan used to be a Jedi.”

“Like you,” Alecto said.

“He’s nothing like me,” Ahsoka said, her mouth going thin.

Alecto made a faint gesture of apology, then snaked one hand out to take the datapad, pulling it across the table towards herself with the very tips of her fingers. She glanced down at it, then up again.

“You can keep that,” Ahsoka said gently. “I’ve got copies. There are a few other people I need to speak to after I leave here, too.”

“How many of those children are still alive?” Cham asked. “The ones recommended for…for Project Nemesis?”

“Twelve of those names are marked ‘active’, including Hera’s,” Ahsoka said, her gaze moving to him. “But I’m not sure what that means, or how accurate that is. The Spire isn’t the only detainment facility the Empire has.”

“And the others?”

“‘Deceased.’”

Cham looked down at the tabletop, fighting back bile. Every time that he thought that the Empire couldn’t get any worse it found some way to surprise him. “What did your contact say?” he asked, changing the subject.

Ahsoka shook her head. “I haven’t met with them yet. I doubt they’ll know anything about Hera, but I should be able to find something out about this Inquisitor. This Kanan,” she added, frowning. “Something about this doesn’t feel right, Cham.”

“You mean aside from our daughter wearing an Imperial uniform and swearing on the Emperor’s head?” Alecto said, raising her gaze from the datapad.

“Yes. Aside from that.” Ahsoka rested an elbow on the table, rubbing at her jaw. “We’ll get to the bottom of this. I promise you.”

*

_Ten years ago_  
_Stygeon Prime_

It was always too cold in her cell.

Not so cold that Hera spent most of her time shivering, but just a degree or two below what was comfortable for Twi’leks. Her thin prison uniform didn’t do much to help; it was made of some kind of body-conforming fabric, with a hood that covered her ear-cones and wrapped all the way around her lekku. Her prisoner identification number was printed across her chest and on her left arm, just beneath the symbol that Hera didn’t know but which she assumed indicated the prison itself. Despite the fact that it covered her from head to toe, the uniform made her feel naked and terribly exposed, like all of her was on display. There wasn’t even a blanket in the cell, just a bunk built into the wall.

Hera didn’t know how long she had been here. She wasn’t sure how long she had been unconscious before she had woken up in an infirmary somewhere – she didn’t know if it had been on a starship or if she had already been in the prison. The medical droid there had fixed her broken nose and patched up the cut on her forehead where the stormtrooper had struck her with his blaster rifle, then drawn what felt like a pint of blood and given her a series of shots it had refused to explain. There hadn’t been anyone else there – no stormtroopers, not even the ISB agent who had been at the colony. Hera had asked the medical droid about her mother and her cousins over and over again, but it had just repeatedly said that that information wasn’t available to it. It must have given her some kind of sedative, because Hera had fallen asleep again; the next time she had woken she had been in this cell.

She hadn’t seen another living being since she had left the colony.

At first Hera had tried to keep track of the passage of time by the lighting in her cell, which had what she had initially thought of as day and night cycles, before she realized that they were completely irregular. Then she had tried to use her meals, which were delivered to her through a slot in the cell door, before realizing that there was no pattern to their delivery either. By then Hera was well and truly confused.

At first she had tried waiting patiently, expecting someone to eventually come and tell her what she was doing here. Then, when no one had come, she had searched the room, hoping to find some way out – something that might let her slice the door, or a way into the narrow ventilation shaft in the ceiling, or _something_. At last she had resorted to screaming and yelling, hoping that someone outside could hear her, or that there were cameras in the cell – something she didn’t like to think about when she was using the toilet on one side of the room. She had threatened her father’s wrath and his political connections on Ryloth and Coruscant – Hera knew that Senator Orn Free Taa would be horrified when he learned about this – and then she had just begged for someone, anyone, to come and tell her what she had done to deserve this.

Hera was fourteen years old. She had never hurt anyone in her life – she hadn’t even hit the stormtrooper she had shot at back on Zardossa Stix. This had to be a mistake. It _had_ to be.

She was sitting on the edge of the bunk with her head in her hands, her white-wrapped lekku slumping forward over her shoulders, when the door slid open. It took Hera a moment to look up, barely able to believe it; the door hadn’t opened since she had arrived, however long ago that had been.

There was a human man standing at the top of the steps leading out of the cell, lit from behind so that his face was shadowed. Just beyond him, Hera could see a pair of stormtroopers in the corridor outside, their backs turned to her.

“Hera?” said the man. “Hera Syndulla?”

She scrambled to her feet as he came down the steps towards her, the door sliding shut behind her with a throat-clenching _thud_. “Who are you?” she demanded. “What do you want? Where’s my mother? I’m – you can’t keep me here! My father –”

“My name is Roberto Beneke,” the man said, raising his hands in a soothing gesture. “I’m an agent with the Imperial Security Bureau.”

Despite her best intention to hold her ground, Hera took a step backwards, bumping into the bunk she had been sitting on. She closed her hands into fists at her sides and said, her voice tight and pitched high from nerves, “My father is Cham Syndulla of Ryloth. He’s a member of the Curia, he’s a personal friend of Senator Orn Free Taa. This is a mistake, you can’t –”

“I’m afraid that the Curia has been dissolved, Hera,” said the human, derailing her entire carefully prepared argument.

“Wh-what?”

“Due to recent unrest on the planet, it has become clear to His Imperial Highness that the Curia is no longer capable of governing Ryloth. For now, Moff Delian Mors is in direct control of the system. In any case, Cham Syndulla has not attended Curia meetings for quite some time now, undoubtedly due to his…other interests.”

Hera wrapped her arms around herself. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. My father has been a member of the Curia since before I was born. We’re loyal Imperial citizens. You can’t keep me here –”

“Actually, we can, Hera,” Agent Beneke said gently. “I understand that this might come as a shock to you, but Cham Syndulla does not have the best interests of the Empire at heart. Not the Empire, not Ryloth, and I’m afraid not his family, either.”

“My father is a _politician_ ,” Hera snapped. “He’s not a terrorist! Whatever you think happened is a mistake –”

“Your father and his terrorist organization, Free Ryloth, attempted to assassinate the Emperor last month, Hera. Cham Syndulla did succeed in destroying an Imperial star destroyer and killing thousands of loyal citizens – Twi’leks among them.”

Hera clasped her hands to her mouth before she could stop herself. “That’s not possible!” she said. “You’ve got the wrong person. Ask anyone, my father would never –”

“You were on Ryloth when the Separatists invaded eight years ago, Hera,” said Agent Beneke. “I think you know what your father is capable of. You just don’t want to admit it to yourself.”

“You’re _lying_ ,” Hera repeated fiercely.

“No, Hera.” He took something out of his pocket, a palm-sized holoprojector. “This is dashcam footage from an Imperial V-wing, taken while they were searching for the Emperor after his shuttle crashed on Ryloth’s surface.”

Hera tried to take a step back, knowing that she wouldn’t like whatever was in the hologram, but she was already standing with her legs flat against the bunk and she instead just sat down heavily, clutching at the sides of it with both hands.

Beneke lowered the holoprojector so that it was at her eyelevel. The image that sprang up was of a narrow gorge somewhere in Ryloth’s tropical equatorial zone. Hera could see buildings in it, structures built into the walls of the gorge – the kind built by Twi’leks all across Ryloth. On either side of the gorge’s top were armed Twi’leks, firing down into the village. As Hera watched, Imperial transports landed and spat out stormtroopers. There was no sound, but she flinched anyway, watching stormtroopers and Twi’leks fire and die on both sides.

“My father –” Hera began, but the words died on her lips as she saw several Twi’leks separate themselves from one of the groups. One of them, a woman, turned to say something to two of the others – the biggest man Hera had ever seen and –

Her father.

“No,” Hera whispered. “This isn’t –”

The big Twi’lek grabbed Cham Syndulla, pulling him away from the edge of the gorge as the woman broke and ran, firing at something – _someone_ – as she did. Hera’s father was shouting, trying to fight free, before the other man slung him over his shoulder like a sack of jogans and ran. Laserfire streaked across the hologram; it exploded in debris and static and Hera flinched again as it blinked out.

She dug her fingers into the lip of the bunk to keep herself from shaking as Agent Beneke lowered the holoprojector. “Is my father alive?” she blurted out.

“Cham Syndulla managed to escape capture,” Agent Beneke said. “Most of his forces were killed in this ill-considered attack, though. As were dozens of Imperial stormtroopers.” He paused for an instant, his gaze heavy on her face, before adding deliberately, “And every single inhabitant of the village where the Emperor took shelter.”

“My father wouldn’t do that,” Hera said breathlessly. “My father would never hurt innocent beings.”

“I’m afraid that’s not true, Hera. Your father decided that these people – that children the same age as you and your cousins – were acceptable casualties. They would still be alive if not for your father.”

“That’s not true!” Hera said, leaping to her feet.

Beneke laid the holoprojector down on the bunk where she had been sitting. “The only reason you’re here, Hera, is because of what your father did. If it wasn’t for his rash actions on Ryloth, you and your family would still be on Zardossa Stix. Your aunt Aleema and cousin – Lika, was it? – would still be alive.”

Hera covered her face with her hands, then let them drop back to her sides. “That’s not – the Empire did that! You – you killed –”

“No, Hera,” Agent Beneke said. He laid a hand on her shoulder, holding her in place as she tried to flinch away from him. “The Empire didn’t kill your aunt and cousin. Your father killed them as surely as if he had put a blaster to their heads and pulled the trigger. None of this would have happened if it wasn’t for him.”

Hera shook her head, lekku slapping against her shoulders. “No!”

“Yes,” Agent Beneke corrected. “You’re a bright young woman, Hera. Think about it. You’ll see that it’s true, once you stop letting your feelings override your better judgment.”

Hera looked up at him, lost for words.

He squeezed her shoulder. “We’ll talk again, Hera,” he said, and turned to go. His steps were heavy on the steps as he mounted them; he rapped on the closed door with one fist and it slid open in response.

Hera took a step after him. “Wait – you can’t leave –”

Agent Beneke stepped out into the corridor, and the door slammed shut behind him. Hera stared at it, shaking, then collapsed back onto the bunk beside the holoprojector. She wasn’t even aware she was crying until she felt the tears running down her face.

*

_Present day_

“Hera,” Kanan said afterwards, when Hera was almost asleep. They were curled up together beneath the sheets, Hera with her head on Kanan’s good shoulder and leg pressed between his thighs, Kanan with his arm wrapped around her waist.

“Hmm?”

“What happened out there?”

Hera went still, which this close – skin to skin, breath to breath – Kanan couldn’t miss. She swallowed before she said, “Today?”

“Last night.” Kanan turned his head to look at her, and Hera propped herself up on an elbow so that he didn’t try and hurt himself in the process.

“Do you remember any of it?” she asked him. “Even though you were –”

Kanan frowned, but it wasn’t aimed at her. “Just flashes,” he said after a moment. “Not – things I saw, but – Force impressions, I think. Just emotion.”

“Like what?”

He bit his lip. “It’s…hard to explain. The words don’t really exist in Basic.” He looked up at her. “You were there.”

Hera smiled, though she could feel the edge to it, and leaned down to kiss him, cupping his face between her hands. Kanan put one hand up to brace her, his fingers splaying familiarly across her hip. “I love you,” she said.

“I love you too,” he murmured against her mouth. “I’m sorry.”

“For what?”

“I know you hate it when I get hurt.”

“It’s not like it was your fault.” Hera kissed him again, quick, and couldn’t help the whisper at the back of her mind that said, _no, it was mine_. “I’ll let you off the hook this time. Just make sure that the next time is a _long_ way off.”

She felt his smile. “I’ll do my best.”

“Good.” Hera laid her head down on the pillow beside his, reaching for his good hand. She twined their fingers together and said, “Go to sleep, love.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some things on Tumblr: my amazing beta Xena and I [talk about the design of Kanan's Inquisitor uniform](http://bedlamsbard.tumblr.com/post/125570164433/xenadd-bedlamsbard-xenadds-concept-art-for); and Kayaite did some lovely art of [Kanan in action](http://bedlamsbard.tumblr.com/post/125869666823/kayaite-heres-an-inquisitor-kanan-based-off) and [being...recruited](http://bedlamsbard.tumblr.com/post/125874192478/kayaite-kanan-didnt-want-to-cooperate-i-think).
> 
> For new readers, I do daily progress reports over on Tumblr, under the tag "[daily fic snippet](http://bedlamsbard.tumblr.com/tagged/daily-fic-snippet)," if you want to keep track of what I'm working on or get a hint of what's happening in the next chapter or two.


	4. Loose Cannons

_Ten years ago_

The seventh time that Agent Beneke came to Hera’s cell, she was curled up on her bunk, watching the holocartoon he had brought her the last time he had visited. She had a blanket now, at least, even though she thought that the temperature in her cell might have been dropped a few degrees after Beneke had given it to her. She still didn’t know how long she had been here; the day and night cycles and the meal deliveries hadn’t gotten any more regular, and there wasn’t, as far as she had been able to ascertain, any pattern to Agent Beneke’s visits. Aside from the stormtroopers standing guard outside her cell, who might as well have been statues, Agent Beneke was the only living being Hera had seen since she had left the colony.

She heard the now-familiar sound of the lock disengaging and paused the holocartoon, sitting up as the door slid open. Agent Beneke was standing at the top of the steps, his hands clasped behind his back; he said, “Hello, Hera. How are you today?”

“Hello, Agent Beneke,” she said, folding her hands in her lap. Sitting on the bunk, her legs weren’t long enough to touch the floor, and her feet dangled loose in front of her. “I’m bored.”

“I’m sorry to hear that, Hera,” Agent Beneke said, descending the steps. Behind him, Hera could see the blank wall opposite the cell door and the stormtroopers waiting outside; an instant later the door slammed shut.

Hera looked at him hopefully. Agent Beneke had taken to bringing her small treats whenever he came, though he hadn’t given her the blanket until two visits back, before he had brought the holocartoon. It made a welcome change from the bland food cubes she was usually given and the long hours alone in her cell.

Agent Beneke wasn’t smiling this time. He came to a stop in front of her, so that Hera had to crane her neck back to look up at him, and for the first time since his third visit Hera felt a hint of fear. His expression was more serious than Hera had ever seen it before.

“Agent Beneke?” she said, hearing the note of uncertainty in her own voice. “Did – did something happen? Is my mother –”

Hera hadn’t even seen a holo of her mother – or anyone else in her family – since she had come here, but she asked after her every time and Beneke had reassured her that Alecto Syndulla was fine, that she wasn’t being mistreated. The last time Beneke had come he had made a vague promise that if she behaved, he might let Hera see her. Hera had learned that it was a very good thing to behave, because anything else led to being left alone longer, or not being given food, or the lights being left off or left on.

“I’m afraid something did happen,” Agent Beneke said. “And I’m afraid it does involve your mother. And your aunt.”

Hera shot to her feet. “What happened to my mother?” she demanded. “And Aunt Seku? Are they all right? Is my mother all right?”

Her mother had to be all right. She _had_ to. If something had happened to her mother, Hera didn’t know what she would do.

Agent Beneke put a hand on her shoulder. “Hera, sit down,” he said. When Hera resisted, he pressed down slightly, until Hera’s knees buckled and she sat heavily down on the edge of the bench. Agent Beneke sat down beside her, though his superior height meant that Hera still had to look up at him.

“Where’s my mother?” Hera asked again.

“I don’t know, Hera,” Agent Beneke said.

Hera stared at him. “How can you not know? You know everything!”

“Seku Syndulla is dead, Hera.”

“What?”

It was a good thing that Hera was already sitting, because she hadn’t been doing so already her knees would have gone out from under her. All she could do was stare at Agent Beneke, feeling as though all the air had gone out of her. She closed her hands into fists, folding them against her belly, and said again, “What?”

Beneke’s hand was still heavy on her shoulder. “Seku Syndulla was shot while attempting to escape from Imperial custody,” he said. “She was killed instantly.”

“My mother –?” Hera managed to say.

Agent Beneke looked at her for a long moment. “Alecto Syndulla,” he began slowly, and held the next words long enough that Hera almost burst into tears before he finally said, “is no longer in Imperial custody. She escaped seven hours ago.”

“She’s –” Hera bit one knuckle hard enough to hurt, trying to keep her voice steady enough to reply. “She’s alive? Mama’s alive?”

“The last that we were aware of her, she was alive,” Beneke said. “She may have been injured in her escape; we weren’t able to determine.”

“My cousins?” Hera whispered.

“Your cousins were being held offworld,” said Beneke. “They were not involved.”

Hera covered her face with her hands, breathing hard. Her mother was free. Her mother was _free_ , and that meant –

What did that mean?

She looked slowly up at Agent Beneke, trying to divine what the expression on his face meant. Humans were hard. They didn’t have lekku, which made up a not-insignificant amount of conversation in Twi’leki, and while they had a lot of similar facial expressions, they were just different enough that Hera couldn’t trust her instincts.

“That’s not all?” she managed to say. “There’s something else?”

“This might be hard for you to hear, Hera,” Agent Beneke said. He kept his hand on her shoulder, and maybe it should have felt like a threat, but it didn’t. Hera stared at him with a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach.

“Alecto and Seku Syndulla were being held in this facility,” Agent Beneke said. “Not that far from here, in fact. Just down the hall.”

“Here?”

“Here,” Agent Beneke repeated. He squeezed her shoulder. “I’m sorry, Hera. There’s no indication that your mother tried to release you, too. As far as we can tell, she didn’t even look.”

The words _you’re lying!_ were on the tip of Hera’s tongue, but Agent Beneke had never lied to her before. He had always told her the truth – about her father, about the attack on the colony, about the Empire. He always brought _proof_ , and Hera hated to watch it, but it was always right there. He had never lied to her before, and there was no reason for him to start now.

“My mother loves me,” she whispered; it was the only thing that she could think of. “My mother _loves_ me.”

“I’m sure she does, Hera,” Agent Beneke said. “But not enough to come for you.”

Hera covered her face again. She heard Beneke stand up; he patted her shoulder and said, “I’ll come and see you again tomorrow, Hera.”

“All right,” Hera managed to make herself say. Her voice sounded dull and brittle to her ears, and she couldn’t look up to watch Agent Beneke leave, though she heard his steps on the stairs and then the sound of the door opening and closing.

There had to be a reason. There had to be. Her mother wouldn’t just leave her. Maybe she just hadn’t known that Hera was being held in the same facility that she and Seku had been. Her mother loved her. She wouldn’t just _leave_ , not without at least looking for Hera. She wouldn’t. Hera couldn’t believe that.

She had left Hera’s father.

She had left Hera’s father, and she had left Hera, and now both of Hera’s aunts were dead, and Hera was alone.

*

_Present day_

Alecto threw a chair.

It was made out of plasteel and not durasteel, so it didn’t even dent the wall it hit; not being wood or anything else fragile, it didn’t even shatter, just bounced off the wall and knocked over a pile of holodiscs stacked precariously on top of a table. They went clattering down to the floor, the chair following them, and then the table finally tipping over on top of the glittering pile.

Cham and Alecto both stared at the mess, then Alecto sank down to lean her elbows heavily on top of Cham’s desk, her hands covering her face. “That’s a lie,” she said, her voice muffled. “We weren’t at that place – the Spire. We were somewhere else. That bastard _lied_ to her.”

Cham reached for her, but Alecto pulled away from his hand. She stalked a few steps away from his desk, clasping her hands together on top of her head, just in front of her lekku. “How could Hera believe that?” she said, her back still to him. “I’m her mother. How could Hera believe that?”

“Alecto –”

Her glare nearly made him flinch. “I would never leave my daughter, Cham. _Never_.”

“I know,” Cham said.

The holovid they had been watching, apparently taken by the security cameras in Hera’s cell in the Spire, was frozen on the image of Hera slumped on her bunk, sobbing into her hands. His daughter looked impossibly young and impossibly fragile, wearing a skintight orange prison uniform with a white hood that covered her ear-cones and wrapped around her lekku down to the tips. No matter how long Cham looked at it, he couldn’t reconcile the image with the confident young woman in the ISB uniform he had met.

“I’m going to find that – that –” Words seemed to fail her, and Alecto stomped a few feet away, then spat a Twi’leki curse that made Cham’s lekku twitch in reaction. “I’m going to make him regret ever being born, let alone laying a hand on my daughter!”

Cham leaned back in his chair, hearing the battered synth-leather creak. “Do you think that you are the only one who feels that way?”

Alecto let out a long, harsh breath, then dropped her hands to her sides and turned back to him. “Sometimes I don’t know, Cham.”

He felt his jaw tighten, but before he could respond someone banged on the hatch, calling his name. He and Alecto both looked towards it, then Alecto, already on her feet, crossed the room to open the door.

Their niece Xiaan tumbled in. She was a sixteen-year-old Twi’lek girl with pale pink skin, her lekku, shoulders, and bare arms elaborately decorated with pale spirals in the traditional fashion of the curial caste and the Syndulla family. Cham quickly shut off the hologram before she could see it.

“Uncle, Mishaan said to remind you that you have a Synedrion session, and if you aren’t there in ten minutes she’s going to use your proxy to send the Fleet to a nice resort system somewhere,” she said breathlessly, straightening up.

Startled, Cham checked the chrono on his desk, then swore, shoving to his feet. Fortunately he was already dressed for the occasion, so he didn’t have to waste time changing; he grabbed his datapad and barely paused to nod thanks to Xiaan on his way out of his cabin.

He was half in and half out of the hatch when he looked back at Alecto, who had put a hand on Xiaan’s shoulder. “Do you want to come?”

Officially Alecto didn’t have any role in the government of the Fleet, but unofficially she was looked at as the Syndulla matriarch despite the fact that she kept trying to reject the role. No one in the Synedrion would question her presence there. Unsurprisingly, she shook her head; Cham nodded and tore out of the cabin, racing for the conference room.

Mishaan Secura leaning against the bulkhead outside the hatch, looking at something on her datapad. She glanced up as Cham came around the corner and slowed to a walk. “I was beginning to wonder if you’d show up,” she said, lowering her datapad and touching the control for the hatch. “I was starting to think I’d get to take us somewhere nice after all.”

“Very funny,” Cham said. “I’m sorry; I was busy with something and I lost track of time.”

“Don’t worry,” Mishaan said, glancing at the chrono on her datapad. “You aren’t late yet, Syndulla.”

“You’ll have to have your vacation another time,” Cham said, settling into the nearest chair. Mishaan took the one directly to his right, setting her datapad down in front of her, and reached for the controls to activate the holoconference software.

For lack of any better model, the Free Ryloth fleet functioned more or less the same way a Twi’lek colony did. Cham wasn’t a dictator, which no one from Ryloth would have stood for anyway, so the Fleet governing body was made of ship’s captains and what was left of the clan heads and Curia members. It was not a perfect system by any means, but the Fleet had managed to survive the past decade with minimal infighting. Of course, the Synedrion had functioned better when the Fleet was smaller; over the years dozens of ships and thousands of people had attached themselves to Free Ryloth’s original core. Cham wasn’t always certain how he felt about that.

Captains and representatives began to appear in twos and threes around the table, the room seemingly expanding to fit them. It would have been impractical for the Synedrion to meet in person, the way it would have done in a real colony; it would also have put the Fleet badly at risk if every captain was on the _Forlorn Hope_ if the Empire attacked. Not to mention that that would have required everyone in the Synedrion to agree to meet on the _Forlorn Hope_ ; thus far the only thing that the Synedrion had managed to agree on unanimously was that they didn’t want to live under the rule of the Empire.

It took several minutes for enough people to arrive that they had a quorum. Waiting, Cham studied at the many-colored faces around him, trying to judge the mood of the room and looking for his supporters.

The captains of the _Final Stand_ , the _Last Resort_ , the _First Last Chance_ , the _Sundered Heart_ , the _Morning Star_ , and the _New Dawn_ were all here; they had all been among the original ships in the Fleet. As Cham ticked them off against his mental list, Sinthya slipped in through the door behind him, taking the empty seat to his left. The _Razor’s Edge_ might be small compared to many of the others, but that didn’t give her any less of a voice or a vote, despite the arguments of some of the other captains. Many of the smaller ships in the Fleet, like the _Razor’s Edge_ , were Cham’s supporters; he had had occasion to be glad of their votes in the past.

Other captains and clan representatives appeared, the ones who had come much later to the Fleet and whose presence here wasn’t predicated on loyalty to the Syndullas or to Free Ryloth. Most of them sat further off down the – by now mostly holographic – table, distancing themselves from Cham and his supporters. They sat in clusters of captains and representatives mostly divided by clan; the largest by far was made up of the Fenns and their clients. Cham glanced at them, but Secchun Fenn didn’t seem to notice the attention, turning her head to speak to one of her captains.

The meeting software on the table in front of him – only visible to him, Sinthya, and Mishaan, the only people physically present – finally displayed that they had reached their quorum, only a few minutes after the meeting had been due to start.

Cham called the meeting to order, settling in for a long few hours of arguing. Fleet politics had more or less been at a détente for the past year since the last batch of ships had joined and upset the delicate balance that kept them all from killing each other. Twi’leks, contrary to popular belief, were not a peaceful species; Ryloth’s violent past might now be centuries old, but recent events had brought it all simmering up to the surface. On several occasions arguments in the Fleet had gone as far as ships facing off against each other, though only once – much to Cham’s relief – had laserfire been exchanged. At least that had only ended in minimal and superficial damage and no deaths.

For the first hour and a half it went as expected. There was the usual bickering about supplies and destination – the Fleet traveled more or less randomly, as far away from prying Imperial eyes as possible – then the conversation turned to the bacta the _Razor’s Edge_ had brought back from Thyferra and the knives came out.

Cham rubbed a hand over his brows, glad that the captains of the _Mother of Winter_ and the _Errant Venture_ were both present holographically and not in person, since they were leaning across the table shouting at each other and any moment now would try and go for each other’s throats. At least he wasn’t alone in staring at them; the half of the Synedrion that wasn’t also involved in yelling at each other were watching them in stunned fascination.

When both of them paused to gasp for breath, Cham rapped his knuckles on the table to get everyone’s attention and said, “Doctor Themarsa onboard the _Forlorn Hope_ , in consultation with other Fleet medical personnel, has decided that fifteen of the twenty barrels of bacta will be distributed throughout the Fleet, while the other five will remain on the _Hope_.”

“Why is that?” said Secchun Fenn before anyone else could speak. “Is it because the _Forlorn Hope_ is your flagship, Syndulla?”

Cham met her gaze and said, “No, Fenn, it’s because the _Forlorn Hope_ has the most advanced medical facilities of any ship in the Fleet. The Fleet medical personal all agreed that it makes the most sense to keep that bacta where it can actually be used to its fullest potential. I had nothing to do with that decision.”

Secchun held his gaze for a long moment. The Synedrion had gone quiet, captains and other clan representatives looking back and forth between them, then Secchun dipped her head slightly in acknowledgement and sat back in her chair, back in her own conference room onboard the _Mercy Kill_.

“That’s going to be a problem,” Sinthya said out of the corner of her mouth, her voice too low for the holoconferencing software to pick up. “I thought the Fenns had been a little too quiet lately.”

“Try and remember the blood feud ended three centuries ago,” Cham muttered back; the Syndullas and the Fenns had spent the better part of half a millennium cheerfully slaughtering each other back before Ryloth had decided to civilize itself by galactic standards. And Twi’leks never forgot anything.

“‘Try’ being the key word.”

Mishaan, on Cham’s other side, rolled her eyes. “You Syndullas,” she said fondly.

The meeting ended not long afterwards. Holographic figure after holographic figure blinked out of existence, the room gradually returning to its normal dimensions as the conferencing software adjusted. At last, the only people left in the room were Cham, Mishaan, Sinthya, and Secchun Fenn.

Cham eyed her warily. “Something you wanted to discuss in private, Fenn?”

Secchun’s gaze flickered to Mishaan and Sinthya, then she made a dismissive gesture with one hand and said, “Your people can stay, Syndulla.”

“Generous.” Cham leaned back in his chair, watching her.

Secchun was a tall Twi’lek woman his own age; she had the pure white skin that was rare among their species and lekku decorated in the geometric patterns favored by her clan. She had been the youngest daughter of the Fenn family before first the Clone Wars and then the Imperial occupation had wiped out the others, leaving her as clan head. When she and Cham had been teenagers, their clan heads had been making negotiations about their possible marriage. Cham would have preferred to walk into the Bright Lands rather than marry Secchun Fenn, and he had the suspicion that she felt similarly about him. The fact that she had brought her own small fleet to join the Free Ryloth fleet four years ago was a sign of how far Ryloth had fallen since Cham had been forced to leave.

“I see Alecto didn’t come,” she said.

“That’s hardly unusual,” Cham replied.

“I’d heard you were spending more time together recently.”

“The state of my marriage is none of your concern, Fenn.”

Her mouth tightened; her husband had been detained by the Empire during the occupation and had never been released. “I heard a rumor that you went to Thyferra for more than bacta.”

Sinthya must have made some sign of surprise, because Secchun’s gaze flicked to her before settling back on Cham.

Cham didn’t blink. “I was following up on a lead from a contact.”

“About the colony?”

“It didn’t pan out.”

Secchun slapped a hand down on the table, the hologram software helpfully replicating the sound. “Don’t pretend that yours was the only clan that lost people on Zardossa Stix, Syndulla.”

“That’s something I’ve never done, Fenn,” Cham said. “Sinthya and I took the _Razor’s Edge_ to Thyferra. All we got out of it was the bacta. We didn’t find out anything about the people from the colony.”

Secchun stared at him, searching his face, then lifted her chin a little and disconnected from the holocommunication. The conferencing software shut down with a faint whine as Cham rubbed his hands over his face. “Sinthya –”

“I’ll find out who talked, if anyone talked,” she said. She stood up, pausing to squeeze his shoulder. “It could have just been rumor. A lot of people in the Fleet had family in the colony and they’ll jump at anything.”

“I’m aware,” Cham said. “I’m also aware that it was Secchun Fenn, of all people, who brought it up. That woman could make a gutkurr run for cover. If she finds out about Hera –”

“It won’t be from anyone on my crew,” Sinthya said. She squeezed his shoulder again, then left, the door sliding shut behind her and leaving Mishaan and Cham alone.

Mishaan blinked at him, frowning. “Find out _what_ about Hera?” she said.

*

Kanan was a heavy, unconscious weight beside her when Hera woke up, sunlight hot on her face. She covered her eyes with one hand, torn between trying to will herself back to sleep before the alarm on her chrono went off and just getting up anyway.

The latter won out and she rolled over to grope for the chrono, managing to turn it off before the alarm began and woke Kanan, since he was actually _asleep_ for a change. Hera usually woke to find him up already, doing pushups or trying to meditate or reading over mission reports.

She slid out of bed, leaning down to pick up the clothes she had discarded the previous night. She dumped them into the laundry and ducked into the refresher to shower, mentally running down the list of things that needed to be done today. If Kanan was back on his feet, then they needed to press the advantage won by the raid; very few beings were willing to argue with an Inquisitor staring them down, and the sooner they finished up on Thyferra, the better. Hera didn’t like the idea of staying on a planet where someone knew where to find her.

_Not just “someone,” Syndulla._

Hera slumped back against the wall of the shower, rubbing her hands over her face. Ten years. Ten _years_.

_If they really cared, they would have come for you years ago._

It wasn’t her voice she heard, it was her handler’s. That didn’t make it any less true; Hera had told herself that hundreds of times over the past decade, though less and less often after the first few years. After she had graduated from the Academy – after she had met Kanan – it hadn’t mattered anymore.

“Damn them,” she said out loud, then thumped her first into the control for the water and stepped out of the shower, reaching for a towel. She dried off and wrapped it around herself, then went back into the bedroom.

Kanan was still asleep. If they hadn’t been on assignment, Hera would have been happy to let him, but as it was –

She went over to the bed and sat down on the side, looking down at Kanan. In sleep, some of his constant strain had eased off; he looked younger and calmer, his hard edges softened, more like the man she had met all those years ago on Gorse. Hera watched him for a few minutes, taking comfort from the steady rise and fall of his chest, then slowly, reluctantly – he so badly needed the rest – leaned down to kiss him lightly on the mouth.

“Kanan,” she murmured, feeling him stir beneath her. “Time to wake up.”

He made an indeterminate sound. “I know, dear,” Hera said, then kissed him again.

She felt the moment when Kanan went from asleep to awake, his body going completely tense and his eyes snapping open. “Hera,” he said, relaxing as he recognized her.

“Yes.” She sat back, and Kanan pushed himself up right, leaning back against the headboard as he rubbed at his bad shoulder. “How’s the arm?”

“Hurts.” He worked it experimentally, then added, “But I can move it, so that’s an improvement on yesterday. Could have done with a different way to find out that the local bacta really is the good stuff, though.”

“Couldn’t we all.” Hera leaned forward and kissed him again, slow and tender. Kanan put a hand up to cup the back of her skull, his touch on the sensitive skin beneath her lekku making her shiver. She didn’t bother trying to keep the towel wrapped around her from falling open.

“Remind me,” Kanan said, his gaze flicking appreciatively down her body, “did we have something we needed to do today?”

Hera kissed him again, then picked up the towel and slid off the bed. “Unfortunately, duty calls,” she said. “You’ll have to take a rain check, dear.”

“I was afraid you’d say that.” Groaning, Kanan levered himself out of bed. He made his way to the refresher as Hera found her underwear and a clean uniform.

She was dressed and strapping her cuirass on when Kanan emerged, a towel slung low around his hips. Hera would have admired the view more if it hadn’t been marred by the massive bruise on the left side of Kanan’s chest where the blaster bolt had struck, mottling his amber skin dark purple.

Kanan saw her looking and grimaced. “Yeah, I know,” he said. “I’ve definitely looked better.”

“At least you’re not bleeding,” Hera said, eyeing the scars on his ribcage and across his right bicep. There were days when she regretted not having a medical droid onboard the _Ghost_. “You’ve looked worse.”

“Small mercies,” Kanan said dryly. “As ever, you give the best compliments.”

Hera had to help him get dressed, since his left arm was still mostly useless. “I hope I don’t get shot again,” Kanan said as Hera buckled the strap of his right shoulder pauldron around his chest. “I’m wearing a lot less armor right now.”

“You’re not going to get shot again,” Hera said, not meeting his eyes. She had pulled rank to check the spaceport logs; no Ryloth-flagged ships had passed through – not that there were many these days – but one of the smaller freighters had matched the specs for a known rebel ship. When Hera had pulled up the security footage for its landing bay, she had seen that aside from one Pantoran woman, the entire crew had been Twi’leks. She had been tempted to send stormtroopers to arrest them, or to alert the star destroyer in orbit, but doing so would have involved explaining why she hadn’t told the truth about who had shot Kanan. The ship had left Thyferra before she had had to start worrying that they would make a second attempt. Either on her or Kanan.

“That’s the kind of optimism I like to hear,” Kanan said as Hera straightened up. She handed him the sling and he pulled it over his head and unarmored left shoulder, settling his bad arm in it. “It sounds a little unsubstantiated, though –”

“You’re not getting shot again,” Hera said firmly. “Not on Thyferra, anyway. No promises for our next assignment.”

Kanan eyed her for a moment, then nodded. He stood, reaching for his lightsaber, when his comlink beeped once. “I have to check in,” he said, glancing down at it before hooking his lightsaber onto his belt. “I’ll see you in the conference room; I’ll use the comm center.”

Hera raised her head to be kissed, then squeezed his good arm and said, “Eat something first, if you don’t make it to breakfast.”

“Yes, dear,” Kanan said, rolling his eyes. His step was heavy on the hardwood floor as he left the suite; Hera stood still, watching him until the door slid shut behind him.

She sat back on the chair that he had just vacated, rubbing a hand over her forehead. She and Kanan didn’t keep secrets from each other, not anymore, not after what had happened the last time. There were things they didn’t talk about, but they weren’t _secrets_. This, though –

Hera couldn’t tell him. She _couldn’t_. Better to let Kanan think that one of the Xucphra or the Zaltin had shot him, because there was no way that Hera could look him in the eye and tell him that it had been her parents.

_They won’t try again_ , she told herself. This would be the end of it, one way or another.

*

Nal Hutta, the Hutt homeworld, was all swamps and wet heat and reminded Ahsoka rather of a Hutt’s backside, but it was one of the few places in the civilized galaxy where the Imperial presence was so minimal as to be nearly nonexistent. The Hutts had come to terms with the Empire some years ago, but it was a fragile peace at best, especially here at the heart of Hutt space. The job of liaison to the Hutts was one of the least desired positions in the Imperial service. Stormtroopers would rather be sent to Orto Plutonia or Umbara than to a Hutt world. Or at least that was the rumor.

As far as Ahsoka was concerned, that made the Hutt worlds the best possible place for a clandestine meeting. It was impossible to leave the Empire’s reach, but she could at least get out of its immediate purview.

Of course, every other lowlife in the Outer Rim had the exact same idea, and it felt like all of them had chosen now to congregate in Bilbousa. At least that meant that Ahsoka didn’t stand out; on the other hand, it also meant that she was uncomfortably aware of how many people there were, the likelihood that one of them might slip a knife into her back before the Force could let her know that she was even in danger.

_Face it, Tano, you were in danger from the moment you came out of hyperspace._ One of these days this really would be a trap rather than a meeting, and the truth was that Ahsoka would probably never see it coming. The best that she could do was take precautions.

Not that there were many she could take now, here and in this place. The street Ahsoka was on was crowded with people, beings of every stripe from slaves slacking off from their labor to the Gamorreans often employed by Hutts to Zabrak children who wove their way shrieking through the crowd. Gardulla the Hutt, whose palace was visible as a series of humped domes in the distance, was throwing some kind of celebration whose origin and purpose Ahsoka hadn’t been able to discover. At least it meant that no one was looking too closely at the Togruta woman with the scarf covering her face.

The press of the crowd pushed her back from the center of the street, until Ahsoka found herself stepping back into an alley just to breathe. She paused to get her bearings, then turned and hurried down it, emerging onto a street that ran more or less parallel to the one she had been on. It was still crowded, but there weren’t quite as many people as there had been on the other, and Ahsoka was able to make her way through the crowd without having to use her elbows. She ducked into another alley, deciding to sacrifice the anonymity of company for not having to worry about being pickpocketed or murdered without anyone noticing. Not that anyone would on Nal Hutta, no matter where she was on the planet, but still.

The next alley she ducked into was twisting, following the curvature of the buildings on either side, and Ahsoka found herself briefly cut off from the streets on either side of it. Frowning to herself, she quickened her pace.

The Force whispered a warning an instant before she heard a lightsaber ignite.

Ahsoka whirled, her own lightsabers already flying into her hands, the blades hissing into existence in time to catch the scarlet blade a bare few inches from her face as its bearer leapt down from an overhanging roof. Her opponent whirled away, black overskirt flaring out around equally black-clad legs, and ignited the second blade on her saberstaff.

“Really?” Ahsoka said. “Every time?”

There was no response, but then again, Ahsoka hadn’t expected one. Her opponent darted forward, blue eyes bright against green skin over a black half-veil; Ahsoka parried the blow and ducked under one long blade, but even in the narrow space of the alley her opponent managed to keep her lightsaber between them. She was considerably more skilled than the Pau’an Inquisitor on Stygeon Prime had been, without his habit of relying overly on the second blade.

“You know,” Ahsoka said, knocking a blow into the wall beside her and ducking beneath the blade as her opponent pulled it out, close enough that she felt it singe the hem of her hood, “there’s no reason we actually have to do this _every time_.”

Her opponent didn’t argue with her. Ahsoka sent herself into a whirling leap over the other woman’s blade as the saberstaff swept towards her, landing in a crouch with both lightsabers in a guard position. “I’m not in the mood,” she snapped. “You know where I was before this? Stygeon Prime. So can we just skip ahead today?”

The woman had been moving forward, but at this she paused, leaning back on one heel before deactivating both blades of her lightsaber. With a quick twist of her wrists, she disconnected the two halves of her lightsaber, breaking it into a pair of curved hilts that Ahsoka had first seen Asajj Ventress using more than fifteen years earlier. Her gaze never leaving Ahsoka’s, her opponent returned her lightsabers to the back of her belt, out of sight beyond the long fall of her black cloak.

Ahsoka deactivated her own lightsabers and returned them to the hooks on her armor. “So you did know.”

The woman who had been Barriss Offee reached up with one hand to unhook the veil, revealing the lower half of her face. “So it was you who killed the Hunter. I was wondering.”

“Friend of yours?” Ahsoka crossed her arms over her chest, leaning back against the wall behind her.

“Hardly.”

“Oh, that’s right,” Ahsoka said, not bothering to even try and keep the sarcasm out of her voice. “You Inquisitors don’t _have_ friends, do you? Not even other Inquisitors.”

“What good are friends?” Barriss said, arching one dark eyebrow.

“I don’t expect you to understand,” Ahsoka said, biting off the words and hating herself for them. These meetings always got her something, but she left them wanting to scratch someone’s eyes out. “Are we going to do this here?” she added shortly. “Because if I have a choice, I prefer the option with alcohol.”

“Fine.” Barriss hooked her veil back into place, completely covering the tattoos that arced across her nose and cheeks – a little faded over the years, but otherwise unchanged – and leaving only her eyes visible. At least they were blue this time. “Lead the way.”

Ahsoka choked down a snarl and turned back the way she had come, feeling the small hairs on the back of her neck and on her bare arms prickle at having an Inquisitor behind her. But Barriss Offee had already stabbed her in the back once, albeit metaphorically; she didn’t have a habit of doing the same thing twice.

She stalked out of the alley and back into the street, looking around for the nearest cantina, which had a neon Rodian pin-up sign blinking on and off in the window. Ahsoka didn’t bother to check if Barriss was following her, just shoved through the door, looking around for an empty booth. She found one near the back and elbowed her way through the press of people in the room – not as many as in the more populated parts of the city, but still a fair amount – to throw herself into the seat that gave her the best view of the door. She raised a hand to get the attention of one of the waiters as Barriss slid into the seat across from her, holding herself stiffly.

“I’ll have a Tatooine Sunburn, please,” Ahsoka said as the server, a lithesome Theelin woman with quite a lot of cleavage on display, came over.

“Just ice water for me,” Barriss said. “With two slices of marsh lemon if you have it, or chelah fruit if you don’t.”

The server noted down their orders and left. Ahsoka lifted the hood of her poncho carefully over the tops of her montrals – there had been holes cut in the top for them – and clasped her hands on top of the table in front of her. After a moment, Barriss unhooked her veil again, letting it hang free along the side of her face.

There were a lot of things that Ahsoka could have said, but she made herself hold her tongue until their drinks arrived. As Barriss delicately squeezed wedges of chelah fruit into her glass of water, Ahsoka took a burning gulp of her cocktail and almost choked on it.

Barriss stirred the faintly blue chelah juice into the water with her straw and waited for Ahsoka to stop coughing before she said, “So?”

_Do you know what they_ did _to Luminara?_ was on the tip of Ahsoka’s tongue. Instead she coughed into her clenched fist and said, “There’s an Inquisitor. I want to know about him.”

“You’ll have to be more specific. There are a lot of Inquisitors.”

“He’s human, he used to be a Jedi, he works with a Twi’lek ISB agent –”

“The Stray,” Barriss said.

Ahsoka blinked. “The _Stray_?”

“That’s what I call him. They call him something else back at the Crucible.” Barriss sucked on her straw, long lashes lowering briefly.

“The Hunter,” Ahsoka said slowly, “the Stray – do all Inquisitors have these little nicknames?”

“Have you ever tried shouting ‘Inquisitor’ in a crowded room on Mustafar?”

“I try and avoid Mustafar.”

Barriss snorted softly. “Maybe you should visit sometime. You might like it.”

“I don’t have the ordnance to firebomb it from orbit.” Ahsoka took another gulp of her drink to keep from saying something she might regret. When she could feel her mouth again, she said, “Tell me about the Stray. For one thing, does he have an actual name?”

Barriss gave her a pitying look. “What do you think?”

“Kanan something, maybe?”

Barriss’s eyes narrowed, her voice dropping an octave as she said, “Where did you hear that?”

“I have my sources,” Ahsoka said. “You’re one of them. Start talking.”

Barriss sucked on her straw again and looked up, studying the stained ceiling for a few moments. “The name you’re looking for,” she said finally, “is Caleb Dume. He was after your time.”

“If he was after my time, he was definitely after yours,” Ahsoka snapped.

Barriss ignored that. “He was calling himself something else when we found him, but he used to be Depa Billaba’s padawan.”

Ahsoka frowned, casting her mind back to her last weeks at the Temple, the usual rumors that had been flying around. Depa Billaba had been injured in the bombing – _Barriss’s_ bombing – and she had been asked back to the Jedi Council, years after giving up her seat in protest of Jedi involvement in the Clone Wars. Ahsoka was fairly certain that she had agreed to take Adi Gallia’s empty seat, but – “Master Billaba didn’t have a padawan.”

“Well, not for long,” Barriss said. “I think the Stray had only been her apprentice for a few months when the Order was given.”

Ahsoka took another gulp of her cocktail, because it was that or hit something. “Keep talking.”

Instead of doing so, Barriss squeezed another few drops of juice out of one of her chelah wedges before dropping it into her glass. She stirred it around with her straw as Ahsoka started to count back from one hundred in Twi’leki, resisting the urge to slam the remains of her cocktail into Barriss’s face.

At last, Barriss said, “The Hunter and my master brought him back to the Crucible five years ago. He’d been on his own for the first eight years after the Republic fell – Depa Billaba died in the Purge, but her padawan survived. She died for him. I’m sure she’d be proud of what he became.”

“Yes, like I’m sure Luminara was proud,” Ahsoka couldn’t keep herself from saying.

Barriss’s eyes narrowed to slits. “Do you want to hear about the Stray or do you want to fight some more?”

“Don’t tempt me,” Ahsoka said, then knocked back the rest of her drink in one gulp. She slammed the glass down on the table and waved the server over. “Another.”

“I’m fine,” Barriss told the woman. “Actually, could I get more chelah wedges? That would be lovely.”

Ahsoka flattened her palms against the tabletop. “You’re missing a year,” she made herself say. “If he was on his own for eight years, but you only found him five years ago –”

“He came to the Crucible five years ago,” Barriss said. “We found him six years ago.”

Ahsoka had the feeling that she wasn’t going to like the answer, but she had to ask, “So where was he that missing year? You wouldn’t be playing coy if you didn’t know.”

“He was with the Imperial Security Bureau,” Barriss said. She glanced up as the server came back, putting Ahsoka’s second Sunburn and a plate of chelah wedges on the table before refilling Barriss’s water glass. “Not as a detainee. I think the technical term is ‘asset’ – he was working with one of their roving agents. I don’t know the details, just that that’s when he got the Inquisition’s attention.”

She squeezed more chelah wedges into her water as Ahsoka stabbed viciously at her cocktail with the straw. “He came willingly, you know. He volunteered.”

“Volunteered.”

“From a certain point of view,” Barriss allowed. “He was coming to Mustafar one way or another. He got to pick his terms. Or that’s what I was told.”

The straw crumpled in Ahsoka’s fist and she tossed it onto the table before gulping at her drink. “Did he volunteer at the point of a lightsaber?”

Barriss shrugged. “I suppose. I didn’t meet him until he had already been at the Crucible for four – five months. And he wasn’t particularly chatty then.”

Ahsoka was clenching her jaw so tightly she could feel it in her lekku and montrals; it took her a moment to work it free and say, “Why was a Jedi padawan working with the ISB?”

Barriss put her head to one side like a curious bird, considering the question. “He was in love with an ISB agent,” she said at last. “I suppose he still is, since after he finished at the Crucible our master let him go back to her. Though if you ask me,” she added, picking up her water glass and hollowing her cheeks around her straw before going on, “the closest thing to a miracle I’ve ever seen is that he came out of the Crucible sane enough for his little tailhead girlfriend to take him back. Not that that’s saying much.”

Ahsoka’s lip curled at the slur, but she made herself ignore it. “What do you mean?”

Barriss was still holding her glass, her gaze on the condensation running down the sides and over her fingers. At this she looked up. “The Stray’s an Inquisitor,” she said. “I’m sure you have some idea of capturing him and reforming him for your grand crusade, but he _is_ an Inquisitor. Do you have any idea how many other trainees he killed when he was at Crucible?”

Ahsoka blinked.

“Fifteen,” Barriss said. “And one full Inquisitor, one of the trainers. Six trainees in his first week. The Inquisitor in the back, in cold blood.” She sucked at her straw again.

Ahsoka drank half of her cocktail in one gulp. It was really too bad that most Force-users couldn’t get drunk; they usually burned through the alcohol too quickly. As it was, the Tatooine Sunburn was only taking the edge off for a few minutes at a time. “Is murder a normal process at the Crucible?”

“What do you think?” Barriss picked up one of the chelah wedges, running one dark fingernail over the blue peel.

Ahsoka thought that she would be happier not knowing what went on at the Crucible, but she wasn’t about to tell Barriss that. Instead she said, “Why call him the Stray? All your little nicknames –”

“ _I_ call him the Stray,” Barriss said. Her gaze slid sideways, watching a Devaronian male who had just come through the door with a couple of Twi’leks of indeterminate gender hanging onto either arm. “Everyone else has a different name for him.”

Ahsoka took one of her chelah pieces, just to have something to do with her hands. Barriss’s gaze shot back towards her, looking a little aggrieved.

“What does everyone else call him?” Ahsoka asked.

Barriss bit her lip, then let her breath out in a rush. “The Jedi,” she said. “Everyone else calls him the Jedi. He’s the only one in the Inquisition. The others were all dead years before he arrived.”

Ahsoka accidentally squeezed the chelah wedge so hard that it exploded in her fist. Wincing, she flicked it aside, reaching for one of the napkins stacked against the wall to wipe the sticky juice off her fingers. “I see why you don’t use that name,” she said through her teeth.

Barriss's lip curled. "Officially he's the Hound, but you killed the only Inquisitor who ever called him that. He was always the Jedi to the others -- after he went back to his pretty Twi'lek he was never around any of the others long enough for the Hunter's nickname to stick."

Ahsoka considered that, then set it aside to ponder another time. “If he’s the Jedi, then what do they call _you_?”

“The Inquisitor,” Barriss said flatly.

Ahsoka put the napkin down and gulped at her drink. “What does he call himself?”

“I doubt even he knows.”

“Fine. What does his girlfriend call him?”

Barriss eyed her for a moment. “Kanan,” she said. “Jarrus, I think. Don’t ask me where he got the name.” She sucked down the last of her water, leaving only ice cubes and squeezed out chelah wedges at the bottom of her glass, and looked at it dolefully.

Ahsoka got the server’s attention to order another drink – this time just jawa juice, since she was starting to lose the ability to feel her mouth – and, in a fit of generosity, a plate of spiced bara nuts, which Barriss had used to devour by the handful when they were padawans. _Back before the world ended._

When her jawa juice and the nuts came, the server also refilled Barriss’s water glass; Barriss looked warily at the nuts and Ahsoka silently pushed the plate towards her, though not before taking a few for herself.

Barriss busied herself squeezing chelah wedges into her water, then, without looking at Ahsoka, said, “Why do you want to know about the Stray? Even if he was once, he isn’t a Jedi anymore. He didn’t even have his lightsaber when we found him – he’s ours now.”

“That’s my business,” Ahsoka said. She tapped a finger on the side of her glass before saying, “Why let him go back to his…girlfriend? That seems unusually generous for the Inquisition.”

Barriss was looking at the plate of spiced nuts. “I heard it was a prize for good behavior.”

“His?”

“Hers.”

Cham Syndulla was not going to like hearing that, Ahsoka thought. “Why?”

Barriss shrugged. “Well, she did hand him over to Lord Vader.”

Ahsoka rubbed a hand over her face. Cham was going to like that even less.

When she looked up again, Barriss had pulled the plate of spiced nuts closer to herself and was chewing with a determined expression, though she swallowed quickly when she saw Ahsoka watching her. She reached for her water glass, the spice on her fingers mixing with the condensation to run down the sides of the glass in red and gold trickles.

“Is there anything else you can tell me about him?” Ahsoka asked, pretending not to notice.

Barriss sucked on her straw, her gaze downcast. “Yes,” she said eventually. “You’ve probably got some idea in your head that you can save him, one more lost Jedi that survived the Purge. It’s why you’re here. It’s why you went to Stygeon Prime.” Her jaw worked for a moment. “But you can’t. What the Empire takes, it holds. Forever.”

Ahsoka met her gaze. “I don’t believe that.”

“You can’t save everyone, Ahsoka.”

Ahsoka shook her head. “I’ll be the judge of that.” She drained the last of her jawa juice and set the glass down on the table, counting out credits to leave beside it before she got up. “Enjoy your nuts, Inquisitor.”

She had only taken two steps away from the table when Barriss said, “Wait.”

Ahsoka paused, feeling her hands clench into fists. “What?” she said without turning around.

“There’s something you’re going to do for me this time.”

*

It turned out that Sabine had spent the night in the Imperial Complex after all; when Hera walked into the officers’ cafeteria she found Sabine sitting alone at a table in the corner. There was a wide swathe of empty tables between her and the rest of the room; all the officers in the room were staring at her.

Hera collected a tray of breakfast items and a mug of caf, then went to join her. About half the officers switched their attention from Sabine to her, but after two weeks they had more or less gotten accustomed to her, or at least were too scared of Kanan to admit otherwise. Sabine, however, was an unknown quantity; until the raid, she had been with Zeb down in the city rather than in the Imperial Complex with Kanan and Hera.

“I hate this place,” Sabine said as Hera sat down. She stabbed her fork down into a sausage link made from some unidentifiable animal, or possibly from processed artificial protein.

“I know,” Hera said.

“You know, when I tried to blow up the Academy on Mandalore, I swore I’d never set foot in another Imperial Complex,” Sabine said.

“I know.”

“You’re lucky I like you and Kanan.”

“I know.” Hera took a bite of her own sausage, chewed, and swallowed. At least the food was better here than it had been in the Academy on Serenno, though that wasn’t exactly a high bar to cross. “Thank you for that, Sabine. You didn’t have to do that.”

Sabine shoved her plate away – there were only a few bites of food left on it, mostly macerated into unidentifiable mush – and shrugged. “I owe you. Both of you. And Kanan’s my friend, too.” She turned her caf mug in short quarter-circles, then added, “Kanan probably would have freaked out even more if there hadn’t been anyone there when he woke up. Or if it was just Chop.”

Hera put her fork down. “What do you mean?”

Sabine shrugged. “Um –” She glanced over her shoulder at the other officers in the cafeteria. “It’s not important.”

Hera frowned. “Sabine –”

She looked over her shoulder again, then said a little plaintively, “Not here?”

“All right,” Hera said, picking up her fork again. “Kanan said something about interrogating the cartel members we captured in last night’s raid yesterday? Anything good?”

Sabine gave her a rundown of the interrogations as Hera ate, the cafeteria slowly clearing out as everyone else finished. Kanan never made an appearance, which either meant that the comm exchange with the Crucible was going long or that it had upset him so badly that he had retreated to the _Ghost_ until he regained his calm. It could be either; it could be both. Hera wasn’t certain which one was preferable.

She and Sabine were the last people left in the cafeteria by the time the cleaning droids finally came in; Sabine leaned forward and said quickly, her voice low, “Kanan sort of – freaked out when he woke up. Pretty badly.”

Hera bit her lip. Kanan had never hurt her, but he had come close before, and he had once put Chopper through a wall, much to Chopper’s shock. “Are you all right?”

Sabine’s gaze flicked down. “It worries me that you knew to ask that. But yeah. I’m fine. I was just surprised. And Kanan’s – I know he has bad days sometimes, but – Hera, is he okay?”

“He’s as okay as he’s ever going to get,” Hera said. She put a hand on Sabine’s shoulder. “The important thing is that you’re all right.”

“I am,” Sabine said firmly. “He already asked me that about twenty times.”

“Do you want to tell me what happened?”

Sabine shook her head. “He woke up, he freaked out, that’s all. He kept asking about you, but that might have been the drugs.”

Hera shut her eyes. _Give me patience_ , she thought, then opened them again. “The medical droids gave him drugs?”

“Well, he was unconscious…”

“Never mind.” Hera stood up, leaving her empty tray for the cleaning droids to deal with. “I commed Zeb earlier; he’ll meet us in the conference room. Kanan too. I want to get this business on Thyferra over with as soon as possible.”

“Before anyone else gets shot?” Sabine asked, following her.

“That too.”

*

Kanan still wasn’t in the conference room when the local officers and the lieutenant governor of Thyferra began to file in, all of them staring warily at Zeb, who was sprawled across two chairs and talking with Sabine. He had arrived at the Imperial Complex not long after she and Hera had left the cafeteria; Hera had had to comm the gate guards to make sure they let him in.

After a few more minutes of waiting, Hera stepped aside to comm Kanan. He didn’t answer, which could have meant any number of things, and after weighing the options, Hera settled for simply starting the meeting; if Kanan never made it she could tell him later. She just wanted to get this _done_.

They were halfway through the meeting when Kanan banged into the conference room, looking exhausted and hollow the way he always did after holocalls back to the Crucible or his commanders in the Inquisition. The entire room went silent as he came in, the local officers flinching back and even Zeb and Sabine looking a little startled.

“Get out.” His voice was flat, pitched lower than usual, all crisp Core consonants at odds with his usual laconic Rim drawl.

The locals didn’t need to be told twice, scattering for the door like startled rycrits. The instant the door had shut behind them Kanan flicked two fingers at the control panel, the lock engaging with a _click_ that made Sabine jump. Then he looked at Hera.

“The Hunter’s dead.”

“Who’s the Hunter?” Sabine asked, still tense. She put both hands on the side of the holotable and leaned forward, obviously trying to make the motion look casual.

“Another Inquisitor.”

“What does he hunt?” Zeb asked.

“Jedi.”

“Thought there weren’t any Jedi left.”

Kanan’s jaw went tight. “There aren’t.”

“Then what –” Sabine trailed off as Hera shot her a sharp look.

“Do I know the Hunter, Kanan?” she asked.

His throat worked for a moment. “I don’t think you were introduced, but he was the Pau’an Inquisitor on Naboo when we were there five years ago.”

Naboo was where the regional headquarters of the ISB for the Mid and Outer Rims were located. Hera and Kanan had been there numerous times over the past four and a half years, but there had only been another Inquisitor there once –

“Oh,” Hera said.

“I’m not exactly weeping over the news,” Kanan said dryly. Some of the tension eased out of his shoulders; he looked around for a chair, then slumped down into the nearest one, rubbing a hand over his face. Zeb and Sabine both relaxed.

“What happened?” Hera asked, getting him a mug of caf and a pastry from the sideboard. She had the feeling that Kanan hadn’t eaten either before or after the holocall.

“Hunt went wrong, I guess. I didn’t get any details; I wasn’t about to ask.” His jaw worked for a moment. “I hope it hurt.”

Zeb and Sabine glanced at each other, apparently surprised by his virulence. Hera looked down, staring at the dark surface of the caf in her hand. The Hunter was the Inquisitor who had sprung the trap that Hera had unknowingly walked Kanan into five years ago, when Kanan had been taken into custody by the Inquisition. He was the one who had put Kanan on his knees in front of Lord Vader, the one who had held Kanan in place when Lord Vader’s lightsaber had been at his throat, the one who had snapped the binders onto his wrists after Kanan had made the choice that had sent him to the Crucible. No wonder Kanan hated him.

Belatedly, she handed the caf and the pastry to Kanan, who stared at them for a moment as though trying to divine their meaning before finally taking both. “Does that mean anything for us?”

Kanan balanced the pastry on his knee and took a sip of the caf before answering. “When are we going to finish up here?”

“We can probably leave tomorrow, if you don’t mind leaving the locals to do the follow-up,” Hera said after a moment of thought. “I wanted to stick around long enough to make sure that the cartels got the idea, but that’s not absolutely necessary. We’re meeting the family heads in two hours, by the way.”

“Let the locals do their jobs for once,” Sabine said. She came around the side of the holotable to face them and leaned back against it, elbows propped up behind her. “It certainly took them long enough to let us do ours.”

“Can’t disagree,” Zeb said when neither Kanan nor Hera said anything. Chopper hooted in agreement.

“Good,” Kanan said. “I hate requisitioning transport.”

And Hera hated letting him out of her sight, at least not any longer than she had to. Kanan had a tendency to get hurt when she did, not to mention a tendency to hurt other Imperials. And Kanan was already hurt.

“Where are we going?” she asked him.

“Back to the Outer Rim.” He took a bite of the pastry, chewed, and swallowed before going on. “Someone has to take over the Hunter’s job since he’s not going to be doing it, and there’s no one else available right now – or at least that’s what I was told. It’s not a permanent sector assignment, though; they just want an Inquisitor on Lothal right now.”


	5. The Lost Padawan

_Five years ago_

The binders were heavy against his wrists and Kanan couldn’t stop shaking.

The last time he had been in a situation even remotely like this he had been fourteen, but this time there wasn’t going to be any way out. This was an Inquisitor and a Sith lord staring him down, not a pair of clones he had called ‘friend’ before his entire world had ended, and there was no way that Kanan could take on the Inquisitor, let alone Darth Vader. He didn’t even have a lightsaber. He hadn’t _held_ a lightsaber in nine years. And no one would be coming for him this time.

Kanan was pretty sure that he should have thrown himself onto Darth Vader’s lightsaber back on Naboo, but he couldn’t have done that to Hera. And it was too late now.

He was in the back of a nearly empty Lambda-class shuttle, strapped into a seat with two stormtroopers on either side of him and the Inquisitor sitting across from him. Vader had vanished into the cockpit hours ago, before they had even left the ground in Theed. A better Jedi probably would have spent the time in meditation, but Kanan wasn’t exactly a good Jedi – he wasn’t even a Jedi anymore – and he had spent the hours between leaving Naboo and now nearly sick with terror. No one had said anything to him since leaving the ISB Complex, but Kanan was pretty sure he knew where they were going.

He felt the air shiver around him as the shuttle came out of hyperspace and couldn’t stop himself from tensing, seeing the Inquisitor’s yellow gaze flicker towards him. The Pau’an lifted the corner of his mouth slightly, in something that might have been amusement.

“Afraid, Jedi?”

“Go to hell,” Kanan said through clenched teeth.

“Oh, no,” said the Inquisitor. “I’m afraid that’s where you’re going.”

Kanan’s response died on his tongue. He could still make them kill him. He _should_ make them kill him; it was what a good Jedi would have done. It was what Master Billaba –

He couldn’t think about Depa Billaba. Not now.

The shuttle touched down a few minutes later and Darth Vader emerged from the cockpit as the stormtroopers pulled Kanan to his feet, manhandling him roughly. He flinched away from Vader as the Sith lord came too close to him, sensing his passage in the Force like an icy wave washing over Kanan’s skin. Kanan could feel the edges of it tugging at his own mind, trying to drag him down, and resisted more out of instinct than conscious thought. Vader tipped his helmeted head slightly in his direction, but didn’t look around, his cloak swirling around his feet as the ramp opened. The stormtroopers propelled Kanan after him, the Inquisitor bringing up the rear, and Kanan walked out into a blast of sulfur-scented heat that nearly made him vomit, because he knew what that meant.

Mustafar. Home of the Inquisition and graveyard of the Jedi.

Kanan really should have just stayed in bed with Hera that morning.

The shuttle had landed on a raised platform that extended out over the center of a river of lava, connected by a long bridge to a series of buildings. All around him, Kanan could see the faint blue glow of energy shielding, presumably protecting the complex from the gouts of lava being thrown up at regular intervals and the toxic fumes that accompanied them. The shadow of the dark side was sunk so deep into the planet that it made Kanan dizzy, and he didn’t protest as he was marched forward along the bridge, trying to clear his head so that he could _think_. But before he could do anything sensible like throw himself over the side they had reached the far end of the bridge, the doors to the nearest building sliding open for Darth Vader as he approached.

Kanan slowed without meaning to, wanting to do anything other than walk into that dark maw, but the stormtroopers dragged him forward anyway, and he stumbled over the doorframe. He could still feel the Inquisitor’s gaze boring into the back of his neck.

Inside, a pale-skinned human man in an Imperial moff’s uniform, along with a gaggle of junior officers, was facing off with Vader. The moff’s gaze flickered to Kanan and he said dismissively, “ _This_ is your Jedi, Lord Vader? I admit, I expected something rather more impressive.”

“Hey!” Kanan protested, mostly because he didn’t know what else to do except maybe pass out with terror. And that was undignified.

The Inquisitor behind him grabbed his ponytail and yanked, dragging Kanan’s head back. He bit his lip against his reaction and saw the moff look away. “As I was saying, Lord Vader, undoubtedly this will upset Ailsa Palak at the ISB.”

“That is hardly my concern,” Darth Vader said.

“Hmmph. Hold him.” The moff walked over to Kanan as the stormtroopers locked their hands around his arms and the Inquisitor gripped Kanan’s ponytail, keeping him immobile. He caught Kanan’s chin between his fingers, tipping it down to study Kanan’s face. “You’re certain this one is a Jedi? I was under the impression with a few exceptions, all the Jedi had been accounted for.”

“This is Depa Billaba’s lost padawan,” said Darth Vader.

“Hmm.” He let go of Kanan with a dismissive flick of his thumb. “We’ll see about that. I remain uncertain of the wisdom of this risk. I’m sure you remember what happened the last time His Imperial Highness allowed a Jedi to enter the Crucible.”

“An anomaly.”

“Perhaps.”

“What happened?” Kanan had to ask.

The moff looked at him the same way he would have done a chair that had suddenly started speaking Basic, then turned back to Vader as if Kanan hadn’t spoken. “And the Jedi before that? Were those anomalies as well?”

Vader just looked at him without speaking.

The moff snorted slightly. “We’ll see.” He jerked his head towards a closed door to Kanan’s left. “Put him in.”

“What –” Kanan began reflexively as the stormtroopers shoved him in the indicated direction. The Inquisitor let go of his ponytail, but kept following them, putting a hand on Kanan’s shoulder to hold him in place in front of the door as one of the stormtroopers removed his binders.

The Inquisitor lifted his free hand and the door slid open, revealing only darkness inside. Kanan rubbed at his newly freed wrists, staring in through the doorway and trying to gain some hint of what was beyond it.

“May the Force be with you, Jedi,” said the Inquisitor against his ear, and thrust him forward, into the dark.

*

Kanan stumbled forward, but managed to keep his footing. He heard the door slide shut behind him, leaving him in total darkness.

He stood still, his own breath harsh in his ears, still rubbing absently at his chafed wrists. His wasn’t the only breath he could hear. There were at least four others, spread throughout the room. One was a Quarren; the faint whistling sound of its breath was unmistakable. Another, when it moved, made a faint clicking sound on the floor – no shoes, then, but barefoot and clawed. Probably mammalian, but it wasn’t out of the question that it could be a Trandoshan or some other reptilian. The others wore soft-soled boots; Kanan could just barely hear their passage across the floor.

_Hear or feel?_

It didn’t matter.

Kanan took a step forward and to the left, not wanting to have the door to his back. He heard Claws hesitate, then start moving in.

Four against one wasn’t exactly great odds, but Kanan had had worse. As long as it was only four, but he couldn’t hear anyone else breathing or moving in the room, and in the Force – 

He half-thought that using the Force had been what had gotten him into this situation in the first place, but there was no way to know that for sure.

He heard the breathing on his right quicken, feet scudding quickly across the floor, and Kanan dodged out of the way. He felt the air move with the passage of his opponent; heard another one making a quick rush from directly in front of him, and dodged again, though not so quickly that he didn’t feel fur brush against his upper arm.

The Quarren moved next, and Kanan heard, for the first time in years, the unmistakable sound of a lightsaber igniting.

The red beam lit the Quarren’s tentacled face and deep-set eyes. It wasn’t anyone that Kanan knew, and he would have been grateful for that if he hadn’t heard another lightsaber ignite – two blades, not one. He turned his head a little to see that it was being held by a Weequay woman a few years older than he was; when she saw him looking at her she drew the saberstaff back into the opening stance of Form Seven. The two lit lightsabers created slight pools of light in the room, but not enough for Kanan to see where his other two opponents were standing.

_Deceive you, your eyes will,_ Yoda had told an attentive class of Jedi younglings almost twenty years earlier. It was one of the first lessons Caleb Dume had ever learned. _Trust them you must not._

_I don’t want to do this,_ Kanan thought, but he bared his teeth in something that was closer to a snarl than a grin. “Well?” he said, spreading his arms. “What are you waiting for? Let’s get this party started.”

Claws moved first and Kanan spun, slamming an elbow into the place where his neck should have been if he was about Kanan’s height. Instead his arm went through empty air and Kanan almost over-balanced before hearing another lightsaber ignite. He threw himself into a forward roll over the blade as it swept in towards him, dodging back out of the way of the Quarren as he thrust at Kanan, and from his position on the floor snapped a kick into the Quarren’s knee. As the Quarren stumbled, his blade wavering, Kanan shoved to his feet, swaying out of the way of the Weequay’s wild attack.

He grabbed her by one of her braids as she moved past him and flung her away with all his strength. Instinct or the Force warned him and Kanan was already moving, snapping one hand out to grab at the arm of his fourth opponent as she leapt at him. She had one blade of her lightsaber ignited and Kanan dodged out of the way, twisting to send her flying over her hip. He spun into a roundhouse kick as Claws came at him again, knocking the Bothan back. The Quarren and the Weequay were both moving, the Weequay thrusting her hand out in front of her.

Kanan felt the Force flex, but he was already flying backwards, hitting the wall hard enough to knock all the breath out of him. He managed to roll aside as Claws leapt at him, burying his lightsaber blade an inch from Kanan’s right ear. Kanan shot one arm out and grabbed a handful of the fur at the back of the Bothan’s neck, slamming his forehead into the wall a couple of times. He had to throw himself over the Bothan’s body as the Quarren slammed his lightsaber blade down like a club, leaving a charred mark in the floor, bouncing back up in a fighting stance with his fists up in front of his face.

He felt rather than saw the fourth opponent, whatever she was, start moving in from his right.

It was startling how easily the Force came back to Kanan.

He slammed both hands sideways, sending Four and the Weequay, who had been advancing in from his left, flying into the walls on either side of him. Kanan was already spinning, grabbing for the wrist of the Quarren as he rushed at Kanan. He twisted at the same time that he slammed his elbow into the side of the other man’s head, grabbing for the lightsaber as the Quarren released it under the pressure.

It was the first time Kanan had held a lightsaber since he had been fourteen years old.

The Quarren let out a warbling cry of horror and lunged for him and Kanan reacted on instincts that had been drilled into him since before he could walk and which nine years of purposeful forgetting couldn’t even begin to erase. The lightsaber flicked out, an arc of burning red light that separated head from body as the Quarren crumpled.

The Weequay, back on her feet, ran towards him, the two blades of her saberstaff pinwheeling as she swept in towards him. Kanan swayed out of the way of the blades and lunged forward, the Quarren’s lightsaber sliding through her chest. Her eyes went wide with shock, her mouth opening a little before Kanan withdrew the lightsaber and she crumpled, the blades of her saberstaff winking out as she released the hilt.

Four, her red eyes burning above her blade, came in from the side. Kanan blocked her blow aside and almost got a lightsaber through his gut for his trouble as the second blade of the saberstaff ignited. Red lightsaber blades sparked as they slid against each other, almost down to the hilts, before Kanan disengaged and ducked the other blade, going down on one knee to sweep his lightsaber out, taking the stranger out at the ankles. She let out a choked sound of pain before Kanan came up and put the blade through her throat.

He felt the Force pluck at him and turned to see the Bothan lunging at him. Kanan thrust the lightsaber out with both hands on the hilt, the weird rounded guards on either side pressing down against his wrists, and the Bothan ran nearly all the way up the blade, lips skinning back from his teeth as he snarled at Kanan. Then he went limp, sliding backwards onto the floor with a thump.

The lights in the room came on.

Kanan looked down, adrenaline still running through him. The bodies were splayed on the floor around him, all of them wearing black and staring sightlessly up, except for the Quarren, whose head had fallen facing away from him. Kanan fumbled for the control on the unfamiliar lightsaber, trying not to look at the red blade, and finally managed to deactivate it just as the door slid open.

“Mildly impressive,” said the Inquisitor who came in, a big Nautolan male who let his gaze sweep from the dead beings to Kanan himself. “They were useless, as I expected.”

The Inquisitor who followed him in was the Pau’an. He lifted the corner of his mouth a little in something that was nearly a smile. “Well, Jedi. There may be something to you after all.”

Kanan’s thumb hovered over the trigger on the lightsaber, but he was in the middle of an Imperial facility with nowhere to run to, and if he – there was no telling what they would do to Hera.

Instead he let go of the lightsaber. It dropped to the floor by his feet with a heavy clunk and Kanan flinched despite himself. He could feel the Force around him like dark water, dragging at him to drown him the way it had destroyed all the rest of his people.

“Now,” said the Inquisitor, “this we can work with, Jedi.”

*

_Present day_

At least going by the brief notes in the ISB planetary catalogue and the even briefer HoloNet entry, Lothal seemed like a hundred other planets Hera had visited over the years. The only thing about it that seemed even vaguely interesting were its natural resources, but even those could be found on thousands of other worlds throughout the galaxy. Sabine, bored and sprawled in the common room with her boots up on the holotable, had been reading the HoloNet pages out loud while doodling on her arm with increasingly smaller paintbrushes. Open jars of paint covered the entire table.

Hera, sitting on the floor by the signature modulator and trying to figure out why it kept throwing up false readings, said, “Sabine, if you spill paint on the floor again –”

“I do not _spill paint_!” Sabine protested. “Kanan said he liked the mural!”

“That was not a mural,” Hera said. “That was _paint_. On my floor!”

“You were okay with the paintings on the walls!”

Sabine’s artistic endeavors had slowly began to spill out of her cabin and into the common areas of the _Ghost_ , which Hera had at first been a little alarmed by. Kanan had been charmed, though, and behind his gruff exterior Zeb had seemed to like it too, so Hera had let it go. Besides, it was nice having some color in the _Ghost_ – she and Kanan both tended towards the spartan.

“Those are walls,” Hera said. “The floor is the floor. I don’t want paint on the floor.”

The corners of Sabine’s mouth turned down. “So should I not ask about maybe laying down a canvas for some Alderaanian moss painting –”

Hera whipped her head around so quickly that her lekku slapped against her cheek. “Absolutely not!”

Sabine wrinkled her nose, which made her whole face scrunch up. “Just think of it as a living carpet?”

“Not on my ship,” Hera said firmly.

“Besides, Chopper would probably just kill it,” Zeb added.

Sabine dipped the paintbrush she was holding into a glass of water and swirled it around, then surveyed her collection of paint jars before picking one that was a very deep purple. “You wouldn’t kill it, would you, Chop?”

He grumbled a response, jabbing one pronged arm at the controls of the holotable. Little holographic dejarik figures sprang up amidst Sabine’s paints and she yelped in startled surprise, almost knocking over half a dozen jars of paint before catching them. The brush went flying out of her hand and hit Chopper on the dome, leaving a streak of purple paint behind. He shrieked in outrage, electroprod shooting out to zap the nearest person, which happened to be Zeb. Zeb yelled as every hair on his body stood up at the electricity.

“Karabast!”

“Chopper!” Hera shouted, leaping to her feet and accidentally kicking over her toolbox.

A moment later she heard one of the cabin doors slam open. Kanan appeared in the entrance to the common room a moment later, barefoot, shirtless, and wild-eyed, his hair hanging loose around his face and his unlit lightsaber hilt in one hand. “ _What_ is going on out here?” he demanded, his gaze moving around the room.

“It’s under control,” Sabine said hastily, her gaze flicking to the lightsaber hilt before she resumed slapping lids back on her jars of paint.

“I’m going to scrap that tin can –” Zeb rumbled.

Kanan jumped back from the doorway as Chopper zoomed past him, Zeb in hot pursuit. He stared after them for a moment, then looked back at Hera and Sabine. “What?” he said helplessly.

Hera shook her head and stepped towards him, resting a hand on his chest – below the faded bruise of his injury – to push him gently back into the corridor. “Not important, dear,” she said, then added over her shoulder to Sabine, “There had better not be a single drop of paint in there when I get back! And get Chopper to help you fix the signature modulator!”

The only response was a sustained groan before the door shut behind her.

“Did I miss something?” Kanan said, blinking and apparently content to let Hera push him back into his cabin. While they usually slept in the same room – Hera’s – there had never been any reason for Kanan to move out of his cabin, and sometimes he needed the privacy. Sometimes Hera needed _her_ privacy.

Normally Kanan’s cabin was so military-neat that it could have won awards at the Imperial Academy, if the Academy had ever bothered to give out any. This time Hera could see that his Inquisitor’s blacks were in a pile on the floor, the pieces of his armor flung around at apparently random intervals, one boot by the door and the other by his bed. He kicked his damaged chest-plate out of the way as Hera walked him inside.

“Were you sleeping?” she asked him after the door closed behind her.

Kanan shrugged. “Trying to.” He dropped his lightsaber onto his meditation cushion and wrapped an arm around her waist, dipping his head to kiss her. “Sounds like the kids are going to be busy for a while.”

Hera knew a change of subject when she saw one, especially one that she used on a fairly regular basis, but that didn’t mean she was going to protest. She tipped her face up to his, smiling, and put her arms around his neck. “I thought you were trying to sleep.”

“I’ll sleep when I’m dead,” Kanan said, his hands moving lower, curving over her bottom and making her shiver, pressing herself against him as he kissed her again. “My arm’s better,” he said against her mouth.

“That’s certainly good to hear,” Hera said, and squeaked a little in surprise as he picked her up easily. She wrapped her legs around his waist as Kanan nuzzled at her neck, carrying her over to his bunk.

He sat down with Hera still in his lap, grinning as she let go of him to pull her Academy sweatshirt off over her head and drop it on the floor behind her. “How long until we get to Lothal?” he asked, his words muffled against her skin as he pressed a kiss to the top of one breast, his hands spanning her back as he reached up for the clasp of her bra.

“Long enough,” Hera said. She tipped his chin up with her fingers to kiss him again. “Long enough, love.”

*

Ahsoka didn’t go straight back to the Free Ryloth fleet after leaving Barriss on Nal Hutta. As interesting a puzzle as Hera Syndulla posed, she wasn’t the only fire Ahsoka had to deal with in the galaxy. Instead she set a course for Phoenix Squadron’s current location and went back to the lounge to puzzle over the files she had accrued over the past decade.

When she activated it, the projector in the holotable helpfully popped up each file as a spark of light in a tight knot the size of her fist. Ahsoka enlarged it until she could pull individual files out, throwing them up into the air around her as she studied the displays.

Nobody knew how many Inquisitors there were. Besides the Pau’an on Stygeon Prime, Ahsoka had faced off against two others, neither of whom had survived to make it back to the Crucible. She had been collecting information on the Inquisitors ever since they had first begun appearing in the galaxy, not long after the fall of the Republic. So far, including the ones whom she had confirmed as dead, she knew of twenty-seven. There _were_ others, Ahsoka was certain of that. She just didn’t know who or where they were.

She didn’t have a hologram of the Pau’an, so his file was only marked by a vaguely man-shaped image. Ahsoka pulled it up and slowly wrote “The Hunter” on it with the tip of one finger, then closed the file again, studying the others until she found the one she wanted. This one did have a hologram attached, and Ahsoka looked at it for a long moment before she opened it.

_Caleb Dume_ , she typed once she had opened up a virtual keyboard to go along with it, _a.k.a. Kanan Jarrus, a.k.a. The Stray, The Hound, The Jedi. Former padawan of Jedi Master Depa Billaba –_

Despite everything that Barriss had said, there wasn’t actually all that much to write. And Barriss hadn’t really told her all that much beyond his name, Ahsoka realized, looking at the cursor blinking at the end of her last sentence. Maybe she didn’t know any more – or maybe she had just wanted to keep Ahsoka hanging, to keep some sort of power over her.

Ahsoka rubbed a hand over her forehead, leaning an elbow against the tabletop. Barriss had never asked her for anything in exchange before. Ahsoka had asked her once why she kept doing this – talking to Ahsoka – and Barriss had told her point-blank that if Ahsoka ever asked her again, Barriss would kill her. Ahsoka suspected that even Barriss didn’t know.

Her request was doable. Ahsoka wasn’t sure if she could pull it off on her own, even though the _Aegis_ was kitted out to the full extent of its capability. It was the kind of operation that would work better with several ships and preferably a few starfighters to keep the TIEs busy. Phoenix Squadron could do it. There were several other rebel cells that would jump at the opportunity to give the Empire hell, no matter how out of their way it took them. Ahsoka had her pick of options. It was unlikely that any of them would even bother to ask where that intel had come from.

Ahsoka clasped her hands together and leaned her forehead against them. It would be smarter to spread this out across cells, lest any single group start asking too many questions. Except – 

Except the Force was telling her to keep this in-house.

_Why?_ Ahsoka asked it silently. As far as she could tell, Barriss’s request didn’t have anything to do with Hera Syndulla or Caleb Dume, which was the only reason she could think of for taking it back to Free Ryloth. It made more sense to bring it somewhere else, even though Free Ryloth certainly had enough ships and starfighters to handle the op. It just wasn’t the sort of thing they usually did. If it wasn’t for her feeling, Ahsoka wouldn’t have even considered taking this kind of operation to them; it was perfect for Phoenix Squadron.

She rubbed her hands over her face again and sat up, clicking out of the editing portion of Caleb Dume’s file and then minimizing it. Barriss had told her one other piece of information that Ahsoka hadn’t known before: there were only two former Jedi in the Inquisition. Barriss Offee and Caleb Dume. _The others were all dead years before he arrived,_ Barriss had said.

“Force help me,” Ahsoka said out loud, and couldn’t help her soft, half-hysterical giggle. “I am the last. I’m not even a Jedi and I am the last.”

Her, and a traitor who had bombed the Jedi Temple, and a man who had traded everything he should have believed in for a pretty smile and a red lightsaber. None of them were Jedi any longer.

She sat there for a few minutes with her hands over her face, then scrubbed at her eyes with the side of one hand and sat back up. _Volunteered at the point of a lightsaber_ , as Barriss had said, meant that given the choice between dying as a Jedi and living as an Inquisitor, Caleb Dume had chosen the latter. Maybe it was a life – and he had gotten Hera Syndulla out of it – but it didn’t speak particularly well for him.

Ahsoka scanned the other Inquisitor files, but none of it spoke to her, and none of the other Inquisitors had come back onto her radar. She was about to minimize them and move onto something else when another folder, down at the bottom of the holodisplay, caught her eye. Frowning, Ahsoka reached to open it. It was full of small files, bits and pieces about the Inquisition she had gathered over the years but hadn’t been able to place anywhere else, most of them labeled with codes Ahsoka knew by heart but had never written down. One of them shouldn’t have been in her Inquisition notes.

Frowning, she tapped it, because there had to have been a reason she had put it there four years ago. The code told her that it had come from one of her contacts on Naboo, where the ISB regional headquarters for that part of the galaxy was located, along with the ISB Academy. It shouldn’t have had anything to do with the Inquisition.

It was an audio file, so distorted and scrubbed of all recognizable features that Ahsoka couldn’t even tell whether the speaker was male or female. The file had been passed along to Ahsoka by one of Padmé Amidala’s former handmaidens; the informant was codenamed Siren.

_“Markus came by yesterday. He hasn’t been in for a while; he told me that he was stationed offworld, working on that big joint operation on Felucia you asked me to find out about, the one that had half the ISB in the sector there. There was even an Inquisitor, the one sleeping with the Twi’lek ISB agent that the boys like to talk about. Markus said that it was the first time he had ever met an Inquisitor; he told me that if he was her – the Twi’lek, I mean – he’d never be able to sleep at night, knowing that that thing was in the bed with him. I’ve never seen an Inquisitor, but I’ve heard such terrible things about them. If even the ISB boys think they’re awful, then they must be really bad. I know – I mean, I don’t know, but – I can’t imagine why she’d go to bed with someone like that if she had a choice about it, even if the boys say that she did. I wouldn’t.”_

The audio file ended there. Ahsoka checked the date on it again, feeling her stomach sink, and then said, “Oh no.”

She doubted there was more than one Twi’lek agent in the ISB screwing an Inquisitor, which meant that Siren could only have been talking about Hera Syndulla and Caleb Dume. And this file was more than four years old. Cham Syndulla was going to be furious, because this all could have ended years ago.

Of course, if Barriss had thought to tell Ahsoka that there was another Jedi in the Inquisition when Caleb Dume had gone to the Crucible, Ahsoka might have actually been able to do something about it. She didn’t know what, but –

She closed one hand into a fist, thumping it down onto the holotable and letting it rest there. A display of emotion wouldn’t solve anything; what was done was done, and Ahsoka couldn’t change it now. All she could do was work with the information she had available to her.

“Blast,” she said softly, then closed all the open files and reached for her datapad. Siren – whom Ahsoka was fairly certain worked at a pleasure house in Theed frequented by ISB trainees and agents – was still active. It was worth asking Sabé to find out from them if they knew anything else about Syndulla or Dume. Maybe it wasn’t likely – but it wasn’t impossible, either.

*

Kanan woke with a jolt, his lightsaber hilt already slapping into his palm even before he opened his eyes. Hera, curled around him, made a faint sound of protest and muttered, “Is that yours or mine?”

He let out a shuddering breath and dropped his lightsaber on the floor by his bunk, looking around the room for the source of the beeping. “Mine,” he said, spotting his blinking comlink on the other side of the room.

Hera made an affirmative sound and buried herself deeper in the blankets as Kanan disentangled himself from her, padding across the cabin to retrieve his comlink. He started to answer it, then recognized the source frequency and flinched, the remembered warmth of Hera’s body vanishing in a flood of cold terror.

He dressed as quickly as he could, his bad arm twinging as he strapped his shoulder armor on. Hera raised her head as he retrieved his lightsaber and hooked it onto his belt, blinking at him in confusion. “What –”

“I have to check in. I’m going to use the comm set in your room.”

She nodded, and Kanan leaned down to kiss her quickly before he left, his boots tapping on the metal deck. His master wouldn’t appreciate it if Kanan kept him waiting.

Hera’s room was as scrupulously neat as Kanan’s usually was, though a little more lived in. Kanan locked the door behind him and plugged his comlink into the comm set, sinking down to one knee in front of it as the holoprojector activated.

The first thing he heard was his master’s breathing.

Kanan bowed his head, unwilling to look up at Lord Vader’s mask. There was no greeting, no reprimand for taking so long to respond; just the sound of Lord Vader’s heavy breathing and Kanan’s own fast, light breath.

_“The Jedi Knights are all but destroyed,”_ his master said at last, and Kanan flinched so hard that he nearly bit through his lip. If his master noticed, he didn’t remark on it, continuing on without pause. _“And yet your task is not complete, Inquisitor. The Emperor has foreseen a new threat rising against him – the children of the Force. They must not become Jedi.”_

“Yes, Lord Vader,” Kanan managed to say. He clasped his hands around his knee, locking his fingers together to try and keep them from shaking.

_“Hunt down this new enemy, and if they will not serve the Empire, eliminate them along with any surviving Jedi who would train them. This is my master’s command.”_

_There aren’t any more Jedi,_ Kanan thought. _I was the last._ But all he said was, “And so it will be done.”

The hologram winked out a moment later and Kanan more or less collapsed onto the floor in front of the projector, his palms flattening against the cool metal. He tipped his forehead down against it, fighting back nausea.

He didn’t know how long he stayed there, but eventually he heard the door slide open behind him. A moment later Hera was at his side, pulling him up off the floor and into her arms. “Kanan –”

He turned his face blindly into her neck, breathing her in.

“What is it?” she asked him, her voice tight with worry. “Kanan, what happened?”

It took him a few minutes to remember how to speak. “Nothing,” he managed to say eventually. “My duty.”

*

Ahsoka was starting to get used to the sight of the Free Ryloth fleet as the _Aegis_ came out of hyperspace well past the fleet perimeter. It hadn’t changed position from the last time she had been here, which made her frown; then again, she didn’t know how often the fleet moved. Phoenix Squadron and the others never stayed in the same location for more than few standard days, but Free Ryloth was an entirely different animal.

She opened a frequency on her comm board. Two Headhunters were already angling in on either side of the _Aegis_ , wary of her approach. “ _Forlorn Hope_ , this is Fulcrum, clearance code 510223. Permission to come aboard?”

There was a pause, then the communications watch on the _Forlorn Hope_ said, _“Your clearance code checks out, Fulcrum. Permission granted. Triumph Two and Three will escort you in.”_

Those must have been the Headhunters. Ahsoka acknowledged the transmission and brought the _Aegis_ in past the fleet perimeter. Cham Syndulla’s flagship was easily the largest ship in the fleet, but some of the other vessels there dwarfed her small hunter-killer. Ahsoka eyed them as she passed, running her usual mental calculations – uselessly, in this case, because Free Ryloth would never join with the rest of the Rebellion. She thought that it might be possible to convince Cham Syndulla, but the other captains in the fleet –

An alert sounded on her comm board. Ahsoka frowned at it, then reached to open the new frequency. She didn’t say anything, just waited.

After a long pause, an unfamiliar female voice with an upper-caste Rylothean accent said, _“What is this vessel?”_

Ahsoka felt her jaw tighten and flipped the vocal masker on before speaking. “Who is this?”

_“This is Secchun Fenn, head of the Clan Fenn, of the ship_ Mercy Kill. _Who am I speaking to?”_

Ahsoka shut off the connection without answering.

She landed on the _Forlorn Hope_ a few minutes later. The deck hadn’t been cleared this time, but Cham and Alecto Syndulla were already waiting for her, standing more than an arm’s length apart from one another. Ahsoka lowered the ramp from the cockpit as she shut the _Aegis_ ’s engines down, then got up to go and meet them once they were already inside.

“You need to get your people under control, Cham,” she said as he opened his mouth to greet her.

He blinked. “Excuse me?”

“One of your ships contacted me on my way in. Someone called Secchun Fenn from the _Mercy Kill_?”

“That _schutta_ –” Alecto Syndulla began.

Cham lifted his good hand, looking tired. “I’ll deal with Secchun,” he said. “It’s fleet politics, it’s not important –”

“Is it a security threat?” Ahsoka asked.

“I said I’d deal with Secchun,” Cham said. “You have news about Hera?”

Ahsoka eyed him for a moment, then tipped her head towards the holotable. She raised the ramp again as they sat down, then slid into the seat across from them. “Not Hera, exactly,” she said. “My contact Cannon had information about the Inquisitor.”

Alecto’s shoulders slumped. “What does that Inquisitor matter?”

“The Inquisitor who used to be a Jedi?” Cham said.

“Yes. His real name is Caleb Dume; he used to be Jedi Master Depa Billaba’s padawan.”

“I don’t care about the Inquisitor –” Alecto began, shaking her head.

“I do.” Cham put a hand on her arm and she shrugged it off. He gave her a worried look, then added, “Go on, Ahsoka.”

Ahsoka looked between them for a moment. Alecto bit her lip and glanced away, but Cham was still watching her, his gaze steady but concerned. Finally, Ahsoka went on, “Master Billaba died, but Dume survived Order 66 somehow and changed his name.” Quickly, she repeated what Barriss had told her about Caleb Dume and his relationship with Hera Syndulla, finishing with, “At some point during the year he was working with her, he got on the Inquisition’s radar. Cannon didn’t know they didn’t take him into custody immediately, which is what they usually do when they identify a Force-user.”

Cham had been listening with his consternation steadily growing in the Force, though his expression was carefully blank. At this, though, he said, “He chose to become an Inquisitor.”

Ahsoka started to reply in the affirmative, then hesitated. “I’m not sure how much choice he had,” she said at last. “Captured Jedi have gone to the Inquisition before, but it hasn’t always been willingly. And they generally don’t do very well there, or last very long.”

“But the Empire gave my daughter to that thing,” Alecto snapped.

Ahsoka shook her head a little and looked at Cham. “Cannon was very clear on the fact that it was the other way around. Hera handed Dume over to Darth Vader, and as a reward, Vader gave him back to her when he had finished his training at the Crucible.”

Alecto slapped a hand down on the table. “I don’t believe that!”

Cham clenched his good hand into a fist, then said, clearly struggling for calm, “Is this Cannon of yours reliable?”

Since “Cannon” was short for “loose cannon,” _reliable_ wasn’t exactly the word Ahsoka would use to describe Barriss Offee. “Cannon has always told me what she believes to be the truth.”

“So they could be lies,” Alecto said. “Hera would never –” She cut herself off, pressing a closed fist against her mouth.

“I wouldn’t count on it,” Ahsoka said as gently as possible. “The Empire can be…very persuasive. Especially to the young.”

“We’ve seen the vids from the Spire,” Cham said.

Ahsoka nodded slowly. She had watched not just Hera’s, but the vids from the other nonhuman children that had also been imprisoned in the Spire for conditioning. If she never had to watch another child be shot in the head again, it would be too soon. _That_ she didn’t want to tell the Syndullas about, since it wouldn’t serve any purpose.

“Is that all?” Alecto asked, her voice sharp with disappointment. “Is that all you were able to find out? Just more of the same?”

“Alecto –” Cham began, looking at her.

“I want to know what happened to my daughter after she left _that place_ ,” Alecto snapped. “I don’t care about the Inquisitor, I want to know what they did to her that she would –” She drew in a breath so deep that it made her lekku tremble, and Cham gave her an anguished look. “I had her in my arms,” she said. “I had her in my _arms_ , and she – she –”

She covered her face with her hands, and Cham stared down at the table.

Ahsoka looked away, self-conscious. “That’s not actually why I came here,” she said after a few moments. “I’ve got a lead on an Imperial shipment that’s going to be in transit within the next standard day. I can’t take it on my own, not with one hunter-killer.”

Cham took a deep breath and looked up, some of the grief on his face lessening. “You want the fleet.”

“I’ve got other resources, but I came here first,” Ahsoka said. She didn’t require anything in exchange for trying to find out about Hera Syndulla and Caleb Dume, but if Cham wanted to think that, she wasn’t going to discourage it. “It’ll be several transports and at least one complement of TIE fighters, maybe more. I want to take the cargo undamaged if possible.”

“What is it?” Cham said, all business now. Alecto snorted softly and looked away, plucking at the sleeve of her work shirt.

“I don’t know,” Ahsoka admitted. “My contact wouldn’t or couldn’t tell me. But the Empire thinks it’s important, so I want to know what it is. I think you feel the same way.”

Cham’s gaze went to Alecto for an instant, then he looked back at Ahsoka and nodded. “All right. I can’t take the _Forlorn Hope_ out, but I can provide the ships and the people. Free Ryloth will always be happy to take a bite out of the Empire.”

*

The wind that came off Lothal’s endless grasslands was warm, carrying with it a hint of new spring growth. It made a nice change from the winter chill that had lingered unseasonably late this year and Ezra Bridger grinned to himself. This was the best time of the year, as far as he was concerned. Summers got too hot and winters too cold; autumns had their attractions but went by too fast. Springs were a promise of the year yet to come, even if the year – by the Imperial calendar – hadn’t quite turned yet.

He was standing on the balcony of an abandoned communications tower about ten kilometers outside of the outer edges of Capital City. When Ezra had been younger he had lived in Capital City itself, but that had been a long time ago. Now he had the communications tower all to himself, and didn’t have to fight for space in the city. No one – _especially_ not the Imperials – bothered to come all the way out here. And that was just the way Ezra liked it.

He rested his arms on the railing, then dropped his chin on top of them. The balcony ran all the way around the upper level of the communications tower and on a clear day like today, Ezra could see all the way to the city. It was quiet out here. Peaceful. Ezra had never been offworld, or even further than a hundred kilometers from Capital City, and days like today the idea of leaving was unthinkable –

A shadow passed over him.

Ezra took a step back from the railing, looking up to see a diamond-shaped starship passing over him, flanked by a pair of TIE fighters. It was headed at a steady clip towards the city, speeding past the communications tower at the maximum civilian airspeed. Lothal didn’t have a whole lot of offworld traffic, and Ezra was familiar with the regulars; this one was new, and he stared after it long after it had passed out of sight.

Ezra…felt something.

It was almost like a sound, a pitch low enough that he could feel it vibrating along his skin, his bones, his veins. It wasn’t like the way he could sometimes make a stormtrooper look the other way if he thought about it hard enough or the time he had stepped out of the way of a speeding hovercab that he _knew_ he hadn’t seen coming, but it reminded him a little of both. He dragged both hands through his wild hair, trying to make sense of it, and stared in the direction that the gem-shaped spaceship and the TIEs had gone.

A moment later the sound – or whatever it was – had vanished, but Ezra could still remember how it had felt. He turned away from the railing and hurried around the side of the balcony towards the emergency ladder that ran down the length of the tower. There was a turbolift too, but it mostly didn’t function, and after the time Ezra had gotten stuck in it for two days and almost died of dehydration, he didn’t use it anymore. He clambered down it as quickly as possible, then slid the last few feet to the ground.

His stolen speeder bike was kept in what had been the main operations room of the tower. Ezra had to kick the door a couple of times to get it to open, then pulled the bike out, kicked the door again to close it, and climbed onboard. A moment later he was speeding off in the direction that the starship had gone.

*

“I don’t get it,” Sabine said, leaning on the back of Kanan’s co-pilot’s chair as the _Ghost_ made its approach to the Imperial Complex in the unimaginatively named Capital City, the largest city on the planet of Lothal. “What’s so special about this place that they need an Inquisitor? Or all those star destroyers we saw on our way in, for that matter? Even Thyferra only had one, and Lothal has _three_.”

“Those are certainly both interesting questions,” Hera noted. She glanced sideways at Kanan and he looked away, keeping his attention on his boards.

“It’s just routine,” he said.

“Inquisitors have a routine?” Zeb asked. “That’s news. I thought all you guys did was hop around the galaxy putting out fires.”

Kanan felt his left eyelid twitch. “There’s routine business. I’ve never been assigned to it before, but I know the drill.”

He felt rather than saw Hera look at him again, but the bulk of the Imperial Complex was rising up in front of them. The Lothal one must be newer than some of the others he had seen; many Imperial Complexes had been built in the first ten years of the Empire and mimicked the Imperial Palace on Coruscant, which meant they were badly fashioned miniatures of the Jedi Temple that made Kanan want to claw his own eyes out. The Lothal one was mushroom-shaped and relatively unobjectionable, except for the pounding headache that the Force was giving him. Kanan couldn’t tell if the two were related or if the Force had just decided to take issue with him today.

He let go of the controls to dig the heel of one hand into the skin above his left eyebrow, hoping it would ease the pain. Kanan didn’t know what the Force was trying to tell him; he didn’t particularly care to find out, since the Force hadn’t really led him anywhere good anytime in the past decade and a half. It had kept him from dying on Mustafar; some days he wasn’t sure whether that was a good thing or not.

“Dear, are you all right?” Hera asked.

“I’m fine,” Kanan said. He reached for the controls again, thinking grumpily, _either be helpful or leave me alone_ at the Force. It wouldn’t do any good, but it was better than taking it out on Hera or the others. “Headache,” he added shortly.

“I’ve got some –” Sabine began.

“No.”

“I didn’t even finish!”

“No drugs,” Kanan said. Especially not when he was about to walk into yet another Imperial Complex.

Sabine sighed, then slumped back into her seat. A moment later Kanan felt her put her feet up on the back of his chair. “So are we actually going to be doing anything here, or are we just going to be sitting around while you do your Inquisitor routine?”

“I don’t know.”

“Maybe you’ll get lucky and Kanan will need you to blow something up,” Zeb said.

“We can only hope.”

Hera slanted a sideways look at Kanan, the corner of her mouth lifting a little. Kanan made himself grin back, then looked at the entrance to the Imperial Complex landing bay in front of them. One Inquisitor didn’t exactly rate the kind of impressive turnout a moff or other Imperial official might get, but he could see figures standing on the deck waiting for them anyway.

As the _Ghost_ approached, the two TIEs that had escorted them in broke off to return to their patrol, each one swooping around the curve of the building’s mushroom dome. Hera braked the _Ghost_ as the ship slid gently inside the hangar, setting down so softly that Kanan could barely feel it. He and Hera began shutting down the ship’s systems as Zeb and Sabine both peered over their shoulders, looking at the beings waiting for them on the deck – a woman in local dress, two men in Imperial uniforms, and a small group of stormtroopers.

“Having an Inquisitor visit is probably the most excitement a backwater like this has had in years,” Zeb said.

“I wouldn’t be so certain about that,” Hera said as the last of the lights on the dashboard went dark. “There were all those star destroyers.”

Kanan got up to follow the rest of the crew out of the cockpit, rubbing at his forehead again. As Hera climbed down the ladder leading to the hold, he stopped, turning his head slightly to one side to look at the door that led into the rest of the ship.

“Kanan?” Hera said, tipping her head up to look at him.

“I’ll be there in a minute,” he said. “I forgot something.”

Her brows drew together in concern, but all she did was nod. “All right.”

The door to the living quarters slid open as Kanan stepped away from the hatch. He went out into the corridor, the Force itching at the back of his skull and pounding behind his temples. It was only a few steps down the hallway to his cabin, the door sliding open before Kanan had done more than lift a hand, not even reaching for the controls.

He had to kick clothing, shoes, random pieces of armor, and various tools out of the way to make his way over to his bunk. When he sat down, the rumpled sheets still smelled comfortingly like Hera.

“Okay,” he said out loud to the empty room. “I’m here. What more do you want?”

A moment later he was sliding off the bunk and onto his knees in front of it, reaching for the near-invisible catch on the drawer. It slid open and Kanan reached inside without really looking, closing his fingers around the hard edges of Depa Billaba’s holocron.

He jerked back so quickly that he fell over, not quite catching himself and banging his elbows against the hard deck. The holocron clattered onto the floor as he dropped it.

Kanan pushed himself back upright, feeling the impact of his fall all along his bad arm. The holocron glimmered innocently at him, the artificial lights of the room catching sparks from its interior. Kanan looked at it, then away, then back again.

_Leave it,_ he thought, _just walk away and leave it_ – because he didn’t want to touch it again, didn’t even want to look at it. He could sense it in the Force even now, a soft murmur at the forefront of his mind. Even when he looked away from it, he could still feel it, a spark of warmth that he didn’t want anything to do with. It was trembling a little with eagerness; he hadn’t touched it in years, not since before –

Holocrons weren’t quite sentient, but they weren’t quite _not_ , either; nothing with that much of the Force in it was completely devoid of life. Kanan had carried this one for a long time before he had taken up with Hera, even if he could count on one hand the number of times he had opened it. And it knew what he was – what he had been.

He covered his eyes with his hand, then picked himself up off the floor and reached for the holocron. He hesitated before he touched it, his hand outstretched, his fingers bare millimeters from the metal, then gritted his teeth and picked it up.

It hummed happily in his hand, warm and comforting. He barely had to look at it for it to start to unlock, the corners turning one by one as it prepared to open, and he nearly dropped the blasted thing again.

“ _No_ ,” he snapped, his voice harsh. “You – you stop that.”

He thought that the holocron almost felt sad before the corners turned back. He stuffed it back into the drawer, meaning to slam it shut before he saw his lightsaber – his _real_ lightsaber, not the one he had cobbled together in the Crucible.

For a long moment all he could do was stare at it, sitting back on his heels with one hand still outstretched. He couldn’t even remember the last time he had opened this drawer.

The hilt was cool against his fingers when he picked it up, fitting naturally into his hand in a way that the lightsaber on his hip he had never done. The blade emitter clicked onto the hilt easily as he twisted it into place and Kanan just looked at it, barely aware of the fact that the pounding in his head had eased to nothing.

His thumb hovered over the trigger. He hadn’t used this lightsaber in years. Kanan Jarrus had never used a lightsaber. He –

His comlink beeped, Zeb saying in a low rumble, “Chief, you on your way out anytime soon? The locals weren’t exactly expecting a couple of aliens and a teenage Mando and the bucketheads are starting to look a little trigger-happy.”

Kanan dropped the lightsaber as if it had burned him, slamming the drawer closed. He tapped the comlink inset in his left vambrace and said, “I’m on my way. Don’t let Sabine shoot anyone.”

He couldn’t help looking back over his shoulder as he left the room.

Hera was giving her usual icy ISB agent impression to the locals when Kanan emerged from the _Ghost_ , Sabine and Zeb hanging back by Chopper and watching the stormtroopers warily. Everyone looked at Kanan as he came down the ramp, taking in his black armor and the lightsaber on his hip.

“You should be expecting me,” he said. “I am the Inquisitor.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For Star Wars OC Week I made graphics and wrote up backstory and character profiles for [Alecto Syndulla](http://bedlamsbard.tumblr.com/post/128427626358/do-you-think-that-just-by-saying-my-name-over-and) and [Roberto Beneke](http://bedlamsbard.tumblr.com/post/128777375873/think-about-it-youll-see-that-its-true-once), which may be of interest.


	6. Phantom

The woman’s name was Maketh Tua and she was the most senior government official currently on Lothal. She was also, though she was doing a fairly good job of hiding it, made visibly nervous by Hera, Zeb, and Sabine, the latter of whom hadn’t taken her helmet off since they had arrived. The stormtroopers and Imperial officers accompanying her had picked up on her unease, though fortunately none had gone for their weapons before Kanan had made his entrance.

As sometimes happened – especially though not exclusively with women and men of that persuasion – Kanan’s arrival made the tension in the hangar ease off significantly. Hera saw Minister Tua’s shoulders drop in relief as he came down the _Ghost_ ’s ramp, then the other woman straightened her back and marched forward towards him. Hera took half a step out of the way, pivoting on the ball of one foot in time to see Kanan lift one expressive eyebrow.

“Ah, Inquisitor!” Tua said before he could say anything. “What an honor to have you here. Governor Pryce sends her regrets, but she’s been called to Coruscant to celebrate Empire Day with Emperor Palpatine himself.”

Kanan blinked once. “And you are –”

“Minister Maketh Tua,” she said brightly, then introduced the other Imperial officers with her, Commandant Aresko and Taskmaster Grint from the local Imperial Academy. “And what do I call you?”

“Inquisitor,” Kanan said flatly. “I see you’ve met Agent Syndulla and the other members of my team.”

Tua flicked a suddenly nervous glance at Hera, who crossed her arms over her chest and tried to resist the urge to smirk. She had met a lot of Imperial officials like Maketh Tua before. It wasn’t that they had any particular hatred for nonhumans, just that they had never had to interact with them on a daily basis before and had no idea how to deal with one wearing an Imperial uniform. Hera couldn’t pass for human. She had been in the Academy for long enough to have that be made very clear to her.

“Yes,” Tua said, looking back at Kanan. “I, er – we weren’t informed that you would be bringing anyone with you.”

Kanan’s eyebrows went slowly up again. “You’re aware of the reason I’m here?”

“Yes, of course!” Tua said. “The cadets will be here whenever you want to inspect them –”

Hera saw a muscle in Kanan’s jaw jump.

“– but the shipment is already loaded and just waiting for your approval before it takes off. If you’ll just come this way –” She cast a nervous glance at Zeb and Sabine, still hanging back by Chopper and the _Ghost_. “Ah, your crew –”

“Stay here,” Kanan told them, then looked at Hera. From the expression on his face, the order had been meant for her too, but she just shook her head slightly and fell into step on his other side, opposite the minister. His jaw was set; to say that he looked unhappy would have been an understatement, and even Tua had to be picking up on that.

Hera saw her falter for a moment, then what seemed to be natural good cheer reasserted itself. “It’s quite thrilling to meet an Inquisitor, ah, Inquisitor.” She looked hopefully at him, but Hera already knew that Kanan wouldn’t – couldn’t – offer the name he wasn’t even supposed to have.

The other two officers excused themselves to return to their usual duties of torturing cadets, if the Imperial Academy on Lothal was anything like the one Hera had attended on Serenno. As she, Kanan, and Tua left the landing bay, Hera heard Zeb say to the remaining stormtroopers, “So, any of you boys up for a game of sabacc?”

“What exactly is this shipment?” she asked Minister Tua, who had gone silent in consternation when Kanan hadn’t responded.

“I – you know, I’m not actually privy to that information, Agent Syndulla,” Tua said, sounding a little sheepish but relieved to be speaking. “Lothal has a multitude of natural resources, of course, and the Empire is active in making use of them –”

Hera let her ramble on, dropping her voice to ask Kanan softly, “Do you know what it is?”

His headshake was barely perceptible.

Hera wet her lips, feeling her lekku twitch a little with unease. Sometimes Kanan got more information than she did on missions that the Inquisition had an interest in, even though they usually ran ISB operations. She also knew that the Crucible didn’t like telling its Inquisitors more than they absolutely had to know, and sometimes not even that, which had led to a few nasty surprises in the past.

But this was just an Imperial shipment. Even if it merited an Inquisitor’s attention, it wouldn’t be anything like their previous experiences. At most it was just the Crucible playing games with Kanan again, something they had done on numerous occasions in the past. Kanan had passed every test the Crucible had given him; he would pass this one too.

*

Kanan felt the wrongness in the Force even before they stepped out onto the landing pad.

He paused for a heartbeat in front of the door, not long enough for Minister Tua or their stormtrooper escort to notice, and put his head to one side, feeling the usual push-pull of the Force inside him. Even after six months at the Crucible and five years as an Inquisitor, Kanan still hadn’t reacquired the instinct to use the Force if there was any way to avoid it, and every time he did use it was as brief and shallow as he could possibly make it. The Force _wanted_ him to use it, in a way that had nothing to do with the dark side or the light; some days Kanan would have preferred to claw his own skin off rather than touch the Force.

He still felt raw and oversensitized from the encounter on the _Ghost_ , only half of his attention on Minister Tua as she chattered on. Having gotten his attention earlier, the Force apparently now felt compelled to keep it, though to what end Kanan didn’t know. He didn’t think he _wanted_ to know, since the last time the Force had poked its head into his life it hadn’t exactly gone well. Though that, Kanan suspected, depended on your point of view. The Hunter had certainly been pleased.

_And now he’s dead, and I hope it_ hurt –

Hera touched the back of his wrist lightly with one finger, and he blinked and looked down at her. She tipped her head slightly towards Minister Tua, who had ceased speaking and was looking at him expectantly.

“Yes?” he said, hazarding a guess at the expected response, and heard Hera sigh.

But it seemed to be enough to placate Minister Tua, who swept on, “Of course, Inquisitor, we were more than happy to hold the shipment until your arrival, and you came so promptly! There will hardly be any delay at all.”

“His Imperial Highness prefers everything to happen on time,” Kanan said, following her out into the bright sunlit expanse of the landing pad. This wasn’t a hangar like the one where they had parked the _Ghost_ ; this was a landing pad that held, along with two Lambda-class shuttles, three _Gozanti_ -class transport cruisers, which took up nearly the entire space. What little remained was filled by the TIE fighters that would attach to the transports once in flight.

Kanan tipped his head back to consider them, letting the gesture conceal his reaction to the fact that he could feel the Force pounding urgently in his head. _Stop that_ , he thought. _Whatever’s in there isn’t worth this_ –

“There are three cargoes?” Hera asked Tua.

Tua turned towards her, faltering for an instant in the face of Hera’s green skin and lekku, then said, “I’m not entirely sure –”

The loading elevator on the nearest freighter lowered, revealing a naval officer with a lieutenant commander’s rank badges. He stepped off the elevator, blinked at the sight of Hera, and turned to Kanan. “Inquisitor? We’re ready for your inspection.”

Kanan jerked his chin in something that was meant to be a nod and moved towards him, Hera just a step behind him. The lieutenant commander said hastily, “Just you, Inquisitor. Your –” He hesitated for an instant, long enough for Kanan to decide that if the man said any of the usual things Kanan was going to do something rash and ill-considered. “Your partner isn’t cleared for this.”

Kanan felt his fingers twitch in barely-aborted violence, the Force stirring a little in reaction to his bad mood. He glanced at Hera, who was already stepping back to Tua’s side. “You want to come?”

She raised an eyebrow. “Apparently I’m not invited.”

Kanan made an indeterminate noise and followed the lieutenant commander onto the loading elevator, feeling it jerk beneath him as it began to rise into the depths of the ship. “Three cargoes or two decoys?”

“Two decoys, Inquisitor,” said the lieutenant commander, sounding a little nervous.

“Must be a pretty valuable cargo.”

“I assume so, Inquisitor.”

Kanan frowned a little, following the lieutenant commander onto the deck as the loading elevator came to a stop. Crewmen paused in their duties and saluted as they passed by, the lieutenant commander leading him into the cargo area of the ship. “You don’t know what it is?”

“No, Inquisitor.” He paused in front of the door to the cargo bay, where two stormtroopers were standing guard. They came to attention, helmeted heads moving slightly as they both tried to stare inconspicuously at Kanan. “I don’t have the clearance.”

_Great_ , Kanan thought. He stepped past the lieutenant commander and the two stormtroopers, holding his hand out over the control panel for the door. Opening the lock with the Force was child’s play; a youngling could have done it. He saw the light change from red to green, then the blast doors slid open and he stepped through. They closed behind him immediately.

For a moment Kanan thought the long cargo bay was empty. He had been expecting crates of machinery or weapons, maybe prisoners – though that, he suspected, the lieutenant commander would have been informed of – but instead there was nothing.

Then he felt the faint susurration in the Force and froze. _Oh, tell me that’s not what I think it is…_

Slowly, as though by doing so he could put off the inevitable, Kanan looked up.

Suspended from the ceiling was a huge green crystal more than twice the length of a human man, slender in proportion but still bigger around than he was, with jagged, irregular ends. Kanan stared at it, too stunned to react.

He could feel it in the Force now that he knew it was there, a deep hum in his bones that seemed to resonate through his entire body. Kanan had felt that before, though not for more years than he cared to think about. And at the time it had been lighter and brighter, a cheerful whisper in his mind that had said, _yes, you, you’re the one, I’m the one for you and you’re the one for me_. But this was unmistakably the same.

He raised his hands and clasped them behind his head, still staring at the blasted thing. “Oh, you gotta be kidding me,” he said, crisp Core syllables softening into his usual Rim drawl. “What the blazes are they gonna do with that?”

_We_ , he thought a moment later. _What are_ we _going to do with that?_

Kanan dropped his hands to his sides, but raised one again a moment later to run over the back of his head, stopping with the side of it against the top of his ponytail. He couldn’t stop looking at the blasted thing.

After a moment he made himself step forward, walking a slow circle around it. It was singing so brightly in the Force that it was all he could feel, all he could think about. He couldn’t take his eyes off it.

Disconcertingly, he could sense the crystal in his lightsaber reacting to it. It was a much softer murmur, a shimmer across the surface of his skin in contrast to the deep hum in his bones. Kanan didn’t know where his lightsaber crystal had come from, but it apparently didn’t matter, because the smaller kyber crystal was matching its resonance to the massive one above him, and Kanan had a sudden moment of real panic that the effect would be permanent. He put his hand on the hilt of his lightsaber, fingers splaying out across the cool metal, but there was nothing he could do.

He walked all the way around the crystal, staring at it the entire time. There had to be a reason for it to be here, but Kanan couldn’t think what it might possibly be. He had never seen a kyber crystal this big – he hadn’t even known that they could _come_ this big, since before today he had only seen the small ones used for lightsabers.

This wasn’t Ilum. There was no reason for a kyber crystal to be here. Except Ilum wasn’t the only place in the galaxy kyber crystals could come from; Kanan knew vaguely that there had been outpost temples at various other sites in the galaxy, and the Sith and the Inquisition had to get their crystals from somewhere.

He let go of his lightsaber to rub his hand over his face, still staring at it. Either the Empire was planning to make the galaxy’s largest lightsaber, or – 

Kanan didn’t want to think about the “or,” but he had spent more of his life living under the shadow of the Empire than he had the Republic, and he could too easily imagine what the Empire could do with a kyber crystal that size.

_We. What_ we _could do with a kyber crystal that size._

Kanan was an Inquisitor. He was the power of the Empire made flesh and his duty was clear to him. He was the Emperor’s will made manifest.

Only he hadn’t always been.

Kanan dug his hands into his hair, pulling it loose of its tail. He didn’t think that he had ever been more aware of the Force singing through his veins, his bones, his skull, what was left of the soul he had sold to the Empire. And the Force said, _this is an abomination, Jedi._

Caleb Dume had died with the Order. Kanan Jarrus had never been a Jedi. The Inquisitor had never been anything but.

_Do your duty, Jedi._

*

Hera and Minister Tua stood in awkward silence after Kanan vanished into the body of the transport freighter. Hera was aware of Tua looking at her out of the corner of her eye, trying to be unobtrusive about it. Hera didn’t bother looking back; as a Twi’lek in the Imperial service she was more than used to it. She had gotten a lot worse than sideways glances over the past ten years.

“I, er, wasn’t aware that Inquisitors worked closely with the Imperial Security Bureau,” Tua offered eventually.

Hera turned towards her, pasting a polite expression on her face. “It’s not very common as a permanent assignment. K – the Inquisitor and I, and our crew, are the exception to the rule.”

“I – see,” Tua said, her tone suggesting that she very much didn’t. “Will you and your crew be on Lothal long?”

“As long as the Inquisitor is,” Hera said. She clasped her gloved hands behind her back, looking back at the transport. She didn’t know why Kanan had been sent to Lothal, save for his oblique comment about routine business. It was the first time in half a decade of working together that Kanan had been assigned to any of the day to day business that Inquisitors handled; Hera was aware that it existed, but had no idea what it actually was. Kanan’s particular talents were better suited elsewhere, and thus far the Inquisition had exploited them to the utmost of his ability.

Kanan had been in the transport an awfully long time, she thought.

“Well,” Tua said with obviously forced cheer, “if you’re here much longer, you’ll be here for Empire Day! We have a marvelous celebration planned.”

“How thrilling,” Hera said, wondering how the holiday was celebrated here on Lothal. On some planets in the Empire, Empire Day was a cause for celebration, while on others it was resented and had to be enforced by the local government. Others it passed by unnoticed.

“You’ll have to come to the parade if you’re still here,” Tua told her brightly.

“Wouldn’t miss it,” Hera said. “I’m sure that it will be quite the spectacle.”

“More than a spectacle, Agent Syndulla. We’ve gotten permission to unveil the latest starfighter from Sienar Systems, being manufactured right here on Lothal, and one of our pilots will be taking it for its maiden voyage. There’s an airshow planned that will be the rival of any world in the galaxy!”

“Oh?” Hera said, feeling her interest pique despite herself. She had applied for entrance to the Starfighter Corps when she had been at the Imperial Academy, but it had been denied because she had already been marked for the Bureau. Which she had been aware of in theory, but she had had the highest scores of anyone in her class during basic flight training, and she had hoped that they would be enough to catapult her out of the ISB Academy into flight school. That hadn’t happened.

“Oh, yes,” Tua said, warming to her subject.

Hera let her babble on, only half her attention on the other woman and the rest of it fixed on the ship in front of her, waiting for Kanan to reappear. When the loading elevator finally started to descend, Hera’s head snapped up so fast that her lekku shivered and Tua stopped mid-word.

Kanan’s expression was like carven stone when he appeared. He said something to the ship’s captain, who had accompanied him down, then stepped off the loading elevator and walked towards Hera and Tua. His jaw was set and his green eyes were pale with determination, his hair badly mussed, some of it pulled out of its tail and hanging loose around his face.

He stopped in front of them, close enough to Hera that she could see the muscle jumping in his jaw, and said to Tua, “Send me the files of every cadet in the Academy. I’ll inspect their training later and do individual formal testing if I deem it necessary.”

“Of course, Inquisitor,” Tua said, sounding a little confused. “That should really go through Commandant Aresko, though…”

Kanan turned his head slightly to meet her eyes, and she trailed off, locking her hands together behind her back. “Of course, Inquisitor,” she repeated, a faint tremor in her voice, and then added uncertainly, “Will you and your team be staying in the Imperial Complex?”

Kanan glanced at Hera.

“Let me get back to you on that,” Hera said after a moment of thought, because Zeb and Sabine wouldn’t if there was any other alternative and there was no real reason to split up the team right now.

“Tell the commandant I’ll be in touch,” Kanan said shortly, then turned and stalked back through the doors of the landing bay.

Hera gave Minister Tua an apologetic nod, then hurried after him, hearing from behind her the deep hum as the transport freighters began to lift off the ground, heading up towards the sky.

Kanan was already halfway down the corridor when she caught up with him. “Kanan!” she said.

He kept walking.

“Kanan –” Hera bit her lip when he didn’t respond, then said, “Inquisitor!”

He paused long enough for her to grab his arm and pull him around, even as he jerked free of her grasp, his leather tabards whirling at the sharp movement. Hera stood back on one heel, raising her hands in a calming motion. “What’s with you? I think you scared poor Minister Tua half to death! You didn’t need to do that –”

“Did I?” His voice came out low and grating, an odd mix between his native Core accent and his usual Rim drawl. “I wasn’t paying attention.”

_That’s obvious_ was on the tip of Hera’s tongue, then she saw the bleakness in Kanan’s eyes and made herself regulate her voice. “So talk to me,” she offered. “What was on that ship?”

He looked away. “Something that could kill a lot of people,” he said eventually. “Or worse. I don’t know.”

A stormtrooper came down the hallway towards them, and they both automatically stepped back so that he could pass between them. When he had gone, they moved back towards each other, Kanan crossing his arms over his chest in a small, tight motion, his shoulders drawing together beneath the black plates of his armor.

Hera looked around, saw an empty doorway, then caught Kanan’s arm and pushed him backwards into it. He went bonelessly and without resistance, letting his arms hang loose by his sides and ducking his chin into his neck guard, slumping back against the doorframe.

“Tell me,” she said again. “Kanan –” His lashes fluttered a little in acknowledgment, which was more than he had offered her a few minutes earlier. “What’s your assignment? What’s this routine business you’re here for?”

He kept his gaze fixed on the floor. “You never got tested when you were at the Academy?” he asked her.

“All the time,” Hera said; all three years at the Academy had been one ongoing, never-ending test for her. _Prove you deserve to be here. Prove that you’re not a traitor and a terrorist like your father._

“Weird tests. Stuff that didn’t make any sense.”

Hera shrugged. “At the Academy? I don’t know. Maybe. It all blurred together after a while. What does that have to do with anything?”

Kanan looked away. “One of the things that Inquisitors do is test Academy cadets for Force sensitivity,” he said, his voice very quiet. “All of the Inquisitors – at least when I was at the Crucible – are older, around my age. Adults. But the Empire has another program for cadets that they pull out of the Academy, if they’re strong enough in the Force. I don’t know anything about it except that it exists because I’ve never had to do it before.”

“Oh,” Hera said softly. “That’s why you’re here.”

Kanan hunched his shoulders again. “Yeah. That’s why I’m here. To find out if any of those kids in there – kids younger than Sabine – have a high enough midichlorian count to get dragged away from everything they’ve ever known and shipped off to someplace like the Crucible.”

“I’m sure –” Hera began, then had to stop. She had attended the Imperial Academy, even if Kanan hadn’t, and she had seen the aftermath of what had happened to him at the Crucible. The idea of combining the two was almost unthinkable.

Kanan looked at her bleakly. “When you and I started together, it was preserve the galaxy, defend the innocent. A noble cause. Even after – I can live with what I am because we help more people than I hurt. But this is –” He swallowed, his gaze dropping again. His hands opened and closed once. His voice was so soft that Hera could barely make out the words as he finished, “I don’t like it.”

Hera put a hand on his arm, and he flinched back so hard that the back of his head knocked against the doorframe. She lifted her hands quickly. “What are the chances there’s going to be a cadet like that here?”

His jaw worked. He shrugged a little, a compact, abbreviated motion. “Not high. Possible. There was one last year.”

“So statistically –”

“The Force doesn’t work like that.”

“But the likelihood is that nothing will happen,” Hera said reassuringly. “Nothing like that ever happened when I was a cadet on Serenno. No sudden transfers, no mysterious disappearances – and you know that Sabine was the only mysterious disappearance on Mandalore, for that matter.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“And the shipment?”

He lifted his chin a little, but still didn’t meet her eyes. “I did my duty, Hera.”

*

It was close to noon when the Flower of Ryloth woke. She lay still in her narrow cot, her eyes still closed, and listened to the house stir around her. The club wouldn’t open for hours yet, not until afternoon shaded into evening and the sun dipped below the horizon, the first and second moons already high in the sky. In the cot to her left she could hear the Red Star of Zeltros snoring softly in a way that would have shocked her clients if they had known; to her right, several cots away, the little Blue Opal of Pantora was crying softly into her pillow. She was new-come to the house, still in shock from the loss of her home and family – everything she had ever known.

The Flower of Ryloth knew what that was like.

She rubbed a hand over her eyes before she opened them, blinking back sleep as she stared up at the rough wooden boards of the ceiling. The girls and boys of the Lake House all slept in six-person dormitories that ran along the attic of the building; when the club was open it was easy to hear the sounds coming from down below – the club itself and the champagne and pillow rooms and the bathhouse. The Lake House offered all sorts of services to the Imperial officers who were its primary customers.

The Blue Opal was still crying. Flower sat up and shrugged on a threadbare robe that didn’t do much to cut the chill in the unheated attic, then edged barefoot around the empty cot between them before she sat down on the edge of Blue Opal’s cot. Blue Opal let out a choked out sob and buried her face in the pillow, her entire body tensing as Flower laid one blue-skinned hand on her shoulder.

“Shh,” Flower said. “It’s all right.”

“No, it _isn’t_ ,” Blue Opal said, her voice muffled by her pillow, but she let Flower pull her up into an embrace. She was a wide-eyed Pantoran teenager, probably not yet sixteen, with her long lilac-colored hair coming out of its long plait. She was stiff in Flower’s arms at first, trembling with a fight or flight response that she couldn’t control, then all at once all the strength seemed to go out of her and she crumpled, sobbing against Flower’s shoulder.

Flower didn’t know how Blue Opal had come here, but the truth was that it didn’t really matter. Everyone at the Lake House had variations on the same story, and it all came down to the same thing: the Empire had come, it had taken what it wanted, and it had destroyed the rest. The Flower of Ryloth had been living with that reality for well over a decade now. She was used to it.

There was a rustle of sheets as the Red Star sat up. “What’s all that – oh.”

Flower glanced over her shoulder at Star, who was pushing the heavy mass of her green hair back out of her face. Star stared back at her, then yawned into her fist and came over to them, crawling over the cots in between rather than going around. She dropped down on Opal’s other side and put a long-fingered red hand on the girl’s back.

“There, there,” she said.

Flower rolled her eyes over Opal’s head, and Star shrugged, mouthing, _I don’t do comfort_. That was true; none of her clients ever came to her because they wanted to be comforted. Flower could appreciate the fact that she was trying, after a manner of speaking.

“I want my mother,” Opal sobbed, and Flower winced inwardly, though she didn’t let it show; she didn’t want Opal to feel it, and if there was one thing the Flower of Ryloth knew, it was how to control her body.

“I know, sweetheart,” she told Opal, and stroked the girl’s hair. Her plait was falling over her shoulder, leaving the back of her neck bare; Flower could see the strong black lines of the Imperial cog tattooed there, the skin around it nearly purple and a little inflamed-looking. It was fresh; it still had to hurt. Opal probably hadn’t thought to ask for anything for the pain, though you could get pain tablets in the house if you knew who to ask. Pain tablets, and stronger drugs, even spice. Half the girls and boys at the house were addicted to _something_.

Star patted Opal’s back again, then – apparently having spotted the tattoo at the same time Flower had – crawled back over their cots and hung over the side of hers to dig through the narrow storage space beneath it, eventually coming up with a small plastic jar. Plastic, of course; they weren’t allowed glass since the Angel of Mirial had broken a cup and cut her wrists with the shards. Flower had been the first one into the room where she had done it; she could remember clutching the Angel’s green arms, trying to hold all the blood in, but the Angel had still been smiling when the life had gone out of her.

Star climbed over the cots and sat down cross-legged next to Opal, unscrewing the cap of the jar. She waved it by Opal’s face, though Opal didn’t look up. “This is for the ink,” she said. “Hold still.”

She swiped her fingers through the lotion inside and leaned over to smear it across the tattoo. Flower felt Opal go still, frozen in her arms, but she didn’t move until Star said, “All done now,” and sat back, wiping her fingers off on the hem of her robe.

There was a momentary pause, and then Opal said in a small voice, “It doesn’t hurt anymore.”

“It will again in a few hours,” Star said.

Flower released Opal as the girl sat up. Her face was tear-streaked, her eyes swollen and her nose purple from crying; she wiped the back of one hand across her eyes and then reached back gingerly to touch the back of her neck, flinching as she did so.

“It will still hurt if you do that,” Star added.

“Be nice,” Flower said, more for Opal’s sake than because she really expected Star to listen.

“This is me being nice!” Star protested.

Opal dug the heels of her hands into her eyes, biting her lip. She was still trembling violently, though Flower suspected it had more to do with shock than the chill in the room; she knew from the other Pantoran at the Lake House – the Shining Moon of Pantora – that the planet’s climate was much colder than what Flower or Star was used to. Opal probably didn’t even register it as cold, even though Flower was shivering.

“I want my mother,” Opal said again, miserably.

The Red Star screwed the lid back onto the jar of ointment and tossed it onto her cot in an easy overhand throw. “What’s your name, kid?”

“Don’t do this again,” Flower said, glancing aside. Downstairs, she could hear the clatter of silverware and the rise of voices; by now almost everyone else had to be up, though she suspected that the late risers like the Sweet Singer of Theel and the Pearl of Tholoth were still abed.

Opal glanced between Flower and Star, her expression going uncertain. “They said I wasn’t supposed to use my name anymore.”

“They say a lot of things,” Star said. “I’m Zaidi Farseer. She’s –”

“It doesn’t matter,” Flower snapped.

Opal gave her a nervous look, then said in a small voice, “I’m Khiry Chuchi. My mother is – was – the senator for Pantora. But –” Her gaze slanted towards Flower, flinching back a little as though she expected to be struck. “They said that doesn’t matter anymore. That she’s a criminal now.”

“Yeah,” Star said. “We’ve heard that before.” She glanced at Flower, who looked away.

Flower felt the Blue Opal’s gaze flicker towards her in a silent question and made herself look back, repeating more gently, “My name doesn’t matter. Everyone calls me Flower. You can too.”

The Red Star rolled her eyes. She sat back and pulled her hair over her shoulder, braiding it with quick absent flicks of her wrist. “We should go down to breakfast before everything’s gone,” she said. “Otherwise we’re going to end up scrounging from the kitchens.”

“I don’t want to go out there,” Opal whispered.

“You can’t hide in here forever, kid,” Star said, not without sympathy. “Mother won’t let you. And you’ll starve.”

From Opal’s expression, she didn’t particularly consider that to be the worst of all possible options.

“It’s easier if you get it over with now than if Mother has to drag you out before we open tonight,” Star added.

“She’s your mother?” Opal said uncertainly.

Star rolled her eyes again. “That would be something, considering she’s human.”

“The House Mothers are all called Mother,” Flower said. “That’s just how it is. It was Mother at the house on Onderon too, before I came here.” She had done her training on Onderon, then been abruptly transferred to Naboo without explanation when she had been sixteen, a little older than Opal was now. Still too young to do anything but dance and serve drinks, but old enough to be on the floor, bared to the roving gazes of all their clients.

Star bounced up, suddenly restless. “I’m hungry,” she said. “Let’s go get food. Come on, kid, you can meet the others.”

“I don’t want to,” Opal said again, but she let Star tug her up, standing dolefully still as Flower found a shawl that had belonged to the Angel of Mirial and draped it over her shoulders. Opal clutched at it with one hand, her eyes huge and sad and still swollen from weeping.

Star flipped her half-done braid back over her shoulder and pushed Opal gently in the direction of the door. Flower followed them, stopping by her cot to find her slippers; Star might not care about going barefoot and Opal apparently hadn’t noticed, but Flower would freeze even in the comparatively warmer dining room. Her lekku fell forward over her shoulders as she bent down to pull them out from under her cot and Flower shoved them back with one hand, sitting on the edge of her bed to pull her slippers on. She would change later, before the club opened, but at this hour everyone else would still be in their sleeping things.

“Hey, Blue,” Star said, suddenly at her side. Opal was waiting by the door, looking sadly at her hands and not at them. “You coming?”

“Yes.” Flower stood up, then on a whim caught the Red Star’s fingers in one hand and drew them up to kiss.

Star smiled a little, lowering her voice as she said, “The kid’ll be all right. You have to get over this thing with your name, though. It scares the new girls.”

“It’s been ten years, Zaidi,” Flower said. “That little girl is dead. She died on Zardossa Stix. I accepted that a long time ago, and there’s no use trying to pretend otherwise. You shouldn’t either.”

Star scowled, but before she could say anything else Flower kissed her fingers again and stepped past her. Opal looked up as she approached.

The Flower of Ryloth put an arm around her shoulders. “Come on,” she said. “Let’s go downstairs and meet the others, sweetheart.”

*

The _Syndulla’s Gamble_ was the only ship Cham had remaining from before the Clone Wars. It had started out life as a pleasure yacht decades before – it had belonged to his father – but had been refitted so many times since that very little of the original ship remained intact. Usually the _Gamble_ stayed docked in the belly of the _Forlorn Hope_ , but he had brought it out for this operation, since he wanted a little more freedom to maneuver than being on the _Razor’s Edge_ with Sinthya would have given him.

Walking through the corridors of the _Gamble_ always felt a little like stepping back through time. Though some parts of the ship had been heavily refitted and were now unrecognizable except for their basic ship, others still retained the original wooden paneling, though most of the décor had long since been stripped away and had either been sold, left behind on Ryloth, or kept in storage on the _Forlorn Hope_.

The observation deck, however, was almost untouched. Two decades ago the floor would have been polished to gleaming, but when Cham stepped through the doors they were scuffed, trodden over by dozens of feet Massive transparisteel windows made up the ceiling and most of the walls, except for a knee-high dado that ran around the entire circumference of the room. It was painted with scenes out of Rylothean mythology, stories that Cham had grown up with and which he remembered telling Hera and her cousins when they had been children, and safe.

Alecto was standing on the far side of the hexagonal room, opposite from the door. She didn’t look around as it slid shut behind him with a faint whisper, though Xiaan – sitting on the floor in a corner and doing something with a datapad – raised her head and grinned at him.

Cham could see the other ships in the small task force through the windows as he made his way across the room. He had only taken six ships from the fleet, counting the _Gamble_ , and they had been joined by Ahsoka’s hunter-killer, which hung off to the starboard side of the ship, dwarfed by the larger converted freighters and blockade runners from the Fleet. Not far away an asteroid field stood seemingly still in space, and in the distance Cham could see the bright glow of the system’s star.

It had only been a day, and Ahsoka had admitted that her contact hadn’t been certain how long they had to intercept the shipment, just that it would be traveling through this region of space in the near future. Being away from the Fleet for this long made Cham faintly nervous, especially with Secchun Fenn apparently stirring things up again, but it was a relief to have something to do, some operation that would strike a blow at the Empire. More and more the Fleet either sat dormant or ran before the might of the Empire; Cham had never intended it to be the population in exile it had become, full of civilians who had had no experience with the original Free Ryloth and who had no desire to fight. Or worse, too much desire.

He stepped up beside Alecto, whose lekku twitched a little to acknowledge his presence. She said, “There’s no one here.”

“Patience,” Cham said.

Her arms were folded across her chest. “I don’t trust your friend.”

“You don’t even trust me,” he pointed out.

Alecto turned towards him, her expression faintly surprised and a little hurt. “I trust you,” she said. “I just…you make too many decisions with your head and not enough with your heart, Cham. It’s your flaw.”

“I only have one?”

The corner of her mouth lifted very slightly. “You have many,” she said. “That’s one of your more damning ones, though.”

“There are worse sins,” Cham said.

“Maybe.” She rested her hands on the waist-high rail that ran around the room, staring out at the asteroid field. “We should be looking for Hera. We shouldn’t be out here running your friend’s errands.”

Cham frowned at her. “The relationship we have with Fulcrum cuts both ways, Alecto.”

“The relationship _you_ have with her,” she corrected, not looking at him. “Every minute we’re here is another minute we’re not looking for our child. Another minute she’s out there –”

“What is one more minute added to the weight of ten years?” Cham said.

Alecto turned on him, her lekku flying with the force of the motion. “A lifetime! Damn you, Cham, I had her in my arms and if you hadn’t –”

“What, Alecto? What did you want me to do?”

“Save her!”

“I’m not going to –”

“Hera’s alive?” Xiaan’s voice cut in like a wash of cold water.

Cham froze, seeing from the expression on Alecto’s face that he hadn’t been the only one who had forgotten that Xiaan was in the room too. They both turned to see Xiaan on her feet, her datapad discarded by the wall. Her eyes were wide, her mouth slightly open with shock. She repeated, “Hera’s _alive_?”

“Xiaan –” Alecto began.

Xiaan crossed the room faster than her shorter legs should have been able to manage, grabbing at Cham’s good hand. “Hera’s alive?” she said again, then in a rush. “Where is she? Why isn’t she here? Why aren’t we –”

She paused and took a breath, her lekku trembling. Her grip was tight on Cham’s. For the fourth time, her voice small and a little high-pitched with emotion, she said, “Hera’s alive?”

Alecto looked at Cham over her head and he held his breath, wondering what she would say. They had both agreed that it was better to keep Hera’s sudden reappearance a secret from the rest of the Fleet for now, even from the rest of the family, at least until they knew more about what was going on. Cham didn’t like keeping secrets if he didn’t have to, but this – this he thought had to stay secret. It was one thing to have a missing daughter; it was another to have a daughter who was an Imperial officer.

Alecto put both hands on Xiaan’s shoulders, turning her slightly so that she could meet Xiaan’s gaze. Cham shifted because Xiaan was still holding onto him; she was gripping his hand so tightly that her nails were digging into his skin.

“Hera’s alive,” Alecto said. “We think we know where she is, but we’re not certain, and we’re looking for her.” She met Cham’s eyes and added firmly, “We’re going to bring her home.”

“But if she’s – if you know that she’s – then why are we _here_?” Xiaan demanded, her voice pitching high again. She swung her head around to stare entreatingly at Cham. “You can’t leave her there, Uncle, you can’t – you just can’t – you can’t leave her in that place, you _can’t_ –”

Xiaan never talked about what had happened when she and Doriah had been slaves. Even now, six years after they had escaped, she still sometimes woke up crying in the night, screaming for Doriah or her mother, Cham’s long-dead sister Seku. Now she looked on the verge of tears, her lekku trembling with the force of her emotion.

“You can’t,” she breathed. “You can’t leave her there.”

“No one is leaving anyone, _freykaa_ ,” Cham told her firmly. He squeezed her hand back. “We’re going to bring Hera home.” He looked up to see Alecto watching him, her gaze dark.

She nodded slowly, then turned Xiaan back towards herself as Xiaan finally let go of Cham. “Where your cousin is right now is complicated,” she said. “But we _are_ going to get her back, Xiaan. I promise you that. No one is leaving her in the hands of the Empire. No one.”

Xiaan stared at her for a long moment, then twisted around to look at Cham. When he nodded, she made a small, indistinct gesture with her hands and said, “They hurt her.”

Cham hesitated, then remembered the vids he and Alecto had been watching and made himself say, “Probably.”

“You have to get her out of there, Uncle,” Xiaan said. “You have to –” She covered her face with her hands, her voice indistinct as she added, “They _hurt_ her.”

Alecto reached for Xiaan, but she flinched away, then turned and ran out of the room, her breath coming in sobbing gasps. Cham took one step after her, then stopped, staring at the door she had vanished through. He had never seen Xiaan react that way to anything before.

He jumped as Alecto laid a hand over his wrist. Her expression was serious as he turned back to her, her mouth set in determination. “Don’t make me a liar, Cham,” she said.

“Alecto –”

Then the ship’s proximity alarm went off.

*

Ahsoka was in her tiny galley making herself another cup of caf – she was practically living off the stuff these days – when the proximity alarm went off. She dropped the mug into the sink, swearing as boiling hot liquid splashed over her hands, and grabbed a towel from its hook on the wall as she bolted for the cockpit. She tossed the towel onto the empty co-pilot’s seat as she slid into the pilot’s chair, jabbing a still-stinging hand at the comm board in order to raise the _Syndulla’s Gamble_.

Cham Syndulla answered almost immediately, as out of breath as if he had been running too. _“I see it,”_ he said. _“You were right. Three transports and two complements of TIEs. We can take that.”_

“I want the transports whole,” Ahsoka said, closing her hands around the bars of the Aegis’s control yoke to tip the hunter-killer a little further up and give her a better view of the Imperial task force.

There were three Gozanti transport freighters and eight TIEs already detaching from their home ships. They had come out of hyperspace about a hundred kilometers from the small fleet – too close to be able to immediately jump back to lightspeed, but far enough that the fleet had time to react to their appearance.

“Qutee, make sure we’re hooked into the fleet communications net,” Ahsoka said; QT-KT chirped a response and rolled forward to extend a prod into the comm board.

The one ship with the fleet large enough to have a small complement of starfighters was launching them, V-19 Torrents hurtling through space. On the fleet comm net Ahsoka could hear Cham directing ships into place, the faster ones surging out ahead of those which were slower but had more firepower.

_“Shoot to disable, not to destroy,”_ he said sharply. _“We want their cargoes intact.”_

Ahsoka’s hands stilled on the control yoke as the Force thrummed around her. She put her head to one side, her eyes slanting closed as she reached out with her mind, hoping that the disturbance wasn’t an Inquisitor or two on one of the transports.

For a few moments she couldn’t sense anything, then realized that it was because she was searching for the wrong thing – for another being, rather than for anything else. She bit her lip and raised one hand a little, barely cognizant of the Imperial and Free Ryloth ships clashing.

_That_ –

“What is that?” she said out loud, then licked her lips and sank back into the Force.

Not a being, not a presence, but a resonance. Even from this distance Ahsoka felt the crystals in her lightsabers react to it, the hum a light brush along her skin. Except there was something wrong with it – a flaw. A flaw with someone else’s Force-signature shot through it.

She opened her eyes with a gasp. “Cham, order your ships to break off their attack!” she said, grabbing for the comm board. “Now!”

_“Fulcrum, what –”_

Ahsoka felt hyper-aware of the Force, her skin crackling with energy that hadn’t yet been expended. She could feel the flaw growing, the incipient disaster that no one would be able to prevent. “Cham, get out now!” she yelled. “Get your ships out of here now if you want them to survive!”

Cham didn’t need to be told a third time. Ahsoka heard the order go out over the fleet channel, watching the Free Ryloth ships turn and flee through the viewport. Their pilots and captains were demanding explanations, but at least they were obeying.

Ahsoka keyed her comm set again. “Jump to hyperspace,” she told Cham. “Now, do it now!”

_“What is it?”_

Before she could answer, she felt the moment stretch out in the Force. As Free Ryloth ships began to blink off her sensor boards into hyperspace, she felt it shatter.

Green energy crackled along the hull of the central transport. Ahsoka stared at it, clutching at the _Aegis_ ’s control yoke as she watched the transport disintegrate beneath an expanding green ball of energy. It grew larger and larger as she watched. The other two ships tried to break away, but were too slow and were caught in the energy wave. TIE fighters fled before it, but it caught them one by one, their destruction brief bursts of light against the green.

_“Ahsoka!”_ Cham roared in her ear; QT-KT followed it up with a round of furious beeping.

Swearing, Ahsoka flipped the _Aegis_ end over end, turning the ship away from the energy wave. QT-KT had already calculated the jump for hyperspace; Ahsoka said, “I’ll see you on the other side, Cham,” and waited until the _Syndulla’s Gamble_ had jumped to hyperspace before she pulled the lever down, the _Aegis_ only meters ahead of the energy wave before the stars blurred into nothing.

*

Cham’s skin was still crackling with energy from the explosion when the _Syndulla’s Gamble_ tumbled out of hyperspace at the rendezvous, which was only a system away from the asteroid field where they had intercepted the Imperial task force. For a moment the ship hung suspended between hyperspace and realspace, Cham’s lekku lifting and his vision blurring, then Doriah, who was piloting, managed to pull the lever down and the ship jerked into realspace, the stars suddenly streaking into steadiness in the viewport. Cham caught the back of the empty chair at the comm station as he nearly lost his balance, Alecto staggering heavily into his side.

He steadied her with one hand, hearing her breath rasp in her air. “Situation report?” he asked as Alecto pulled herself up. “Where’s the fleet?”

The _Gamble_ had a bridge crew of only two. The co-pilot, a teal-skinned Twi’lek woman called Numa Bril, was gasping, but she looked at the sensor boards and said, “Boards showing four – five – six ships. Everyone came through, General Syndulla.”

“Did the starfighters get back onto the _Final Stand_?” Alecto asked.

“They’re showing on the fleet net,” Numa said after a moment.

Doriah slumped back into the pilot’s seat, then turned to face Cham and said, “Fulcrum’s requesting to come aboard, Uncle.”

“Tell her I’ll meet her at the airlock,” Cham said.

He passed his hands over his face as Numa said, “Incoming calls from the captains of _Final Stand, First Last Chance, Morning Star_ – from everyone. They want to know what’s going on, General.” Something else on the comm board lit up and she added, “Engineering’s calling –”

“Is the ship damaged?”

“Shields are at twenty percent and holding,” Doriah said. “The hyperdrive’s overheated. Uh – that’s it, Uncle.”

“Then tell everyone that they’ll know what happened when I know,” Cham said, and turned to leave the bridge.

Alecto followed him out, her lekku tight with tension. “That was convenient,” she said as they made their way to the airlock.

“What about nearly dying was convenient?” Cham asked, resisting the urge to snap. He could still feel the aftereffects of the energy wave on his skin, a faint itch at the back of his skull that he knew preceded a headache.

“That we just happened to be here – that _you_ were here – and there it went –”

“Nobody expected that, Alecto,” Cham said. “Fulcrum was genuinely surprised.”

“Was she?” Alecto frowned sharply. “And what _was_ that?”

“That,” Ahsoka said as the door to the airlock slid open, “was a kyber crystal exploding.” She stepped out into the corridor, looking distinctly rattled. “Probably a very, very large one, because the kind that goes into a lightsaber wouldn’t create a reaction on that scale.”

“A what?” Cham said.

“A kyber crystal. A lightsaber crystal.” She tapped a finger against the hilt of one of her lightsabers. “Only lightsaber crystals are small, only a few centimeters at most. If they’re destroyed, there’s a violent reaction, when I was a youngling –” She waved that off. “What happened back there – a kyber crystal that would produce that kind of reaction would have to be huge.”

“None of our ships landed any hits on any transports,” Cham said. “I don’t think any of the starfighters engaged the TIEs; no one even got a shot off.”

Alecto crossed her arms over her chest, staring determinedly at Ahsoka.

“It didn’t blow up because the ship was hit,” Ahsoka said. She chewed on her lower lip for a moment, then said, “It was sabotaged. Someone else’s Force-signature was all over it. A kyber crystal exists within the Force – not the way a living thing does, but at a specific resonance that someone Force-sensitive and trained can sense. This one was –” She shook her head a little. “Damaged,” she finished finally. “Someone found, or created, a flaw in it and then forced it open. Maybe it was the stress of coming out of hyperspace, maybe it was deliberately meant to be…here. Aimed at me and whoever I brought with me.”

Alecto’s lekku lifted aggressively, but before she could say anything, Cham said quickly, “What does this mean?”

Ahsoka’s mouth was a tight line. “It means I’m going to have a very pointed conversation with Cannon.”

“So it was a trap,” Alecto said flatly.

Ahsoka sighed, shoulders lifting briefly as she let her breath out. “It’s very likely.”

“If you hadn’t been there we would have all been destroyed,” Alecto said. “That’s an interesting coincidence.”

Cham glanced at her, but she was glaring at Ahsoka and didn’t look at him. “Alecto –”

Ahsoka arched one eyebrow, the white line of her facial markings lifting with the motion. “You can think of it like that if you want. I swear to you, I had no idea that this was going to happen. Cannon’s been helpful to me in the past. I had no reason to think that her tip wasn’t meant in good faith.”

Alecto’s upper lip curled slightly back from her teeth and she let out a soft, dismissive sound.

Cham reached out to put a hand on her arm, but she stepped aside before he could do so, the motion easy and practiced. He bit his lip on his automatic response and said, “What should I tell the fleet?”

“Whatever you want. They’re your people, not mine,” Ahsoka said. “I’m going to get answers one way or another. I’ll bring them to you.”

“If they’re convenient?” Alecto said derisively.

“Even if they’re not.” She nodded to Cham. “I’ll be in touch.”

Alecto turned and strode away as the airlock cycled shut behind Ahsoka. Cham strode after her, lengthening his strides to catch her.

“Alecto!”

She stopped, her shoulders and lekku both tight, then she seemed to make a decision and turned on him quickly, shoving him back against the bulkhead with one hand on his good shoulder. “Why are you trusting that woman, Cham?”

He blinked, taken aback. “Excuse me?”

“You heard me.” She let go of him and crossed her arms over her chest. “Why do you trust her? We almost died and you still believe every word that comes out of her mouth, without even a moment of hesitation? Asking _her_ what you should tell the fleet?”

“This business with the kyber crystal is nothing we know anything about,” Cham said. “A Jedi matter –”

“Then she shouldn’t have brought us into it,” Alecto spat. “Doriah and Xiaan are on this ship, Cham! This was supposed to be a blue milk run or I would have made Doriah leave Xiaan back on the _Forlorn Hope_. Instead –”

“Is it Fulcrum you don’t trust or me?” Cham asked. His comlink buzzed and he slapped it to ignore the incoming call, his attention fixed on his wife. “After everything that she has done for us –”

“Done for us?” Alecto spread her arms, hands closing into fists before she dropped them back to her sides. “What has she done for us? She might have found Hera, but our daughter is still out there, Cham, wearing an Imperial uniform and fucking a blasted Inquisitor! Nury, Ojeda and her brothers, they’re still all out there! There are ten thousand people from the colony that are still out there! Ryloth –”

“Don’t talk to me about Ryloth, Alecto!” Cham snapped. “I know I failed our daughter, our clan, our world, but that’s no reason to take it out on Fulcrum –”

“Oh, don’t flatter yourself, Cham! Not everything is about you, even if you’re gullible enough to believe anything just because it sounds good.” Alecto thumped a closed fist against his chest-plate, hard enough that Cham staggered back against the bulkhead. “You _know_ that we shouldn’t be here now. The Empire isn’t going anywhere, Cham, and neither is the Rebellion. No crystal is worth losing our child again. You forget what’s important.”

“I forget?” Cham said, disbelieving, then slapped at his buzzing comlink again. “We don’t know where Hera is!”

“She would be here if you hadn’t let her go!” Alecto snarled.

“I told you, I’m not bringing her back to the fleet like a prisoner –”

“We’re her family!”

“She shot me! Do you really think –”

“It was a flesh wound, you coward!” Alecto’s shoulders were tight, her lekku stiff with anger. “You left our baby there and instead of trying to find Hera, you’re running around playing hero again, as if that’s not the reason she was stolen from us in the first place! What is _wrong_ with you?”

“Alecto –”

“You left her!”

“It’s not that simple!”

“What about it is complicated? Either you want Hera home or you want to leave her to the Empire, but given everything you’ve done –”

Cham caught her shoulder with his good hand. “Everything I’ve done?” he demanded. “Everything I’ve done has been for Ryloth –”

“And how many people died because of Cham Syndulla’s pride?” Alecto snapped, throwing his hand off. “How many people are dying now because Cham Syndulla had one bright idea, trusted one person too many, because you thought you could take on the Empire –”

“You used to believe –”

“ _They stole my daughter!_ ” Alecto screamed. “They stole my baby and they tortured her and made her into one of them and you _left her there_!”

She was crying with frustration, her hands clenched into fists at her sides. Cham stared at her, completely lost for words. Finally, he said, “Hera is my daughter too, Alecto. And I’m not stealing her twice.”

Alecto shook her head, her cheeks gleaming with tears. “I’m getting her back even if I have to do it by myself, Cham,” she said, her voice choked. “Damn you and damn your crusade, I want my daughter.”

She turned away, then stopped even before Cham’s hand closed on her shoulder, looking up as footsteps came pounding down the corridor. Doriah skidded around a corner and came to a halt in front of them, his green cheeks flushed and his breath coming fast. Just behind him, Xiaan poked her head out around the corner, her eyes wide and nervous, her lekku falling nearly perpendicular to the ground.

“Xiaan told me about Hera,” Doriah said without preamble. “Where is she? Where’s my cousin?”

*

_Ten years ago_

The sixteenth time that Agent Beneke came to her cell, Hera had forgotten what fresh air on her face felt like. She had been in her cell for so long that she had completely lost track of time and her entire world had narrowed to the four walls of her cell. She knew every inch of it so intimately she thought that she could have recreated it bound and blindfolded if need be.

It was still impossible to tell if there was any regularity to the cell’s day and night cycles, some of which were extremely long and some of which were startlingly short. Hera had at one point considered that they might be due to the planet’s orbit – whatever planet she was on – but she thought that there would have been some kind of pattern then. There was no pattern.

This time her cell was in its night cycle, and Hera was curled up beneath the blankets Agent Beneke had brought her, her cheek against the thin pillow she had been given. She was only half-asleep, because the day cycle had been so short that she hadn’t been at all sleepy by the time the lights dimmed to near-blackness. Only the thin strip of red emergency lighting around the door remained, more than enough for Hera to see by with her sharp vision.

When she heard the lock disengage, she sat up immediately, pushing the blankets aside and swinging her legs over the side of the bunk. By the time the door slid open and the lights came up, she had her hands folded in her lap and her back straight, watching Agent Beneke’s now familiar silhouette appear.

He smiled when he saw her. “Hello, Hera,” he said. “I’m sorry to wake you.”

“It’s all right, Agent Beneke,” she said. “I wasn’t really sleeping anyway.”

“More bad dreams?”

“I just wasn’t sleepy.” She tilted her chin up to look at him as he approached, knowing not to get up.

“Well, I’m glad to hear that,” Beneke said. “You’re going to take some tests today and you’ll do better on them if you’re properly awake.”

“What kind of tests?” Hera asked warily. “More medical tests?” The last time Agent Beneke had come, he had brought an AZ-class medical droid that had spent more than two hours poking and prodding her and eventually drawing what felt like a pint of her blood.

He laughed a little. “Not that kind of test, Hera.”

Abruptly, Hera realized that the door to the corridor hadn’t closed yet. She looked around Beneke at it just in time to see another figure appear, this one distinctly female.

The newcomer was dressed all in black, hooded and veiled except for her blue eyes and a strip of greenish skin. She was wearing black armor too, the Imperial crest painted in white on her pauldrons, and had long black skirts that were split to reveal skintight black leggings. A pair of curved metal hilts – lightsabers, Hera realized after a moment – hung from her belt. She regarded Hera in silence, and Hera found herself flinching back a little under that heavy gaze.

“Well, Inquisitor,” Agent Beneke said, “aren’t you going to introduce yourself?”

Without any inflection at all, the woman said, “I am the Inquisitor,” and stepped down into the cell. Hera leaned away from her without really thinking about it, feeling faintly violated by the light tread of the woman’s soft-soled black boots on the metal floor of her cell. Her gaze was fixed on Hera, as sharp and predatory as a gutkurr’s.

“The Inquisitor is going to give you your first test today,” Agent Beneke said as though she wasn’t there, speaking to Hera. “I’ll be here the entire time; you have nothing to be afraid of.”

“I’m not afraid!” Hera said, though she couldn’t keep her gaze from flickering quickly to the Inquisitor, who was now only a few steps away, standing with her arms crossed over her chest. She wished that she could see the woman’s face, because her gaze was flat; it was impossible to read anything from her expression.

Beneke patted Hera’s shoulder in a proprietary sort of way, and the woman’s gaze went to his hand for a brief instant. “Of course you aren’t, Hera,” Beneke said, not looking at the stranger. “Good girl.”

“Wait on the other side of the room, Agent,” said the Inquisitor.

The corners of Beneke’s mouth turned down slightly in a frown, but he released Hera and stepped away, retreating until the Inquisitor stopped staring at him like a predator considering its prey. She looked back at Hera, who straightened her back in response to the inspection, tipping her chin up and repressing the urge to crawl back beneath her blankets until the Inquisitor went away. Instead she fisted her hands together in her lap and tried not to meet the woman’s gaze.

The Inquisitor considered her silently, then pulled out a datapad. The familiar hum of it powering on made Hera relax slightly, then the Inquisitor flicked long green fingers over the screen and looked up at Hera. She flinched backwards again, then glanced at Beneke, embarrassed by her reaction. He gave her an encouraging nod.

The Inquisitor stepped closer and turned the datapad around so that Hera could see the screen. “Look at the images.”

Hera glanced at Beneke again, then did as she was told. Pictures of a speeder, a starship, a cup, a tooka, all rushed by, almost too fast for her to see. Then the Inquisitor turned the datapad back towards herself and swiped her finger over the screen. “Now tell me what’s on the screen.”

“But – I can’t see it,” Hera said, confused.

“I know.”

Feeling helpless, Hera looked at Agent Beneke again. He was frowning, but when he saw her he smiled a little.

“Agent Beneke,” the Inquisitor said, “wait in the hall.”

“I don’t think that’s –”

She turned her head to look at him, the rest of her body not shifting with the motion. Beneke stopped mid-sentence, his expression unhappy, then said, “I’ll be just outside, Hera,” before he left. The door slammed shut after him, making Hera jump.

The Inquisitor reached up with hand and unhooked her veil, letting it hang loose at the side of her face. She was a Mirialan, with diamond-shaped black tattoos arcing across her nose and cheeks; Hera thought that she was probably in her early twenties, younger than Hera had expected given the way she had sent Agent Beneke running. Her expression as she stared down at Hera was doubtful.

Hera looked up at her nervously. The Inquisitor was the first living being besides Agent Beneke that she had seen since arriving here, however long ago that had been – Hera had no way to keep track, and she had stopped trying a while ago. Maybe seeing someone else – especially another woman – should have been reassuring, but instead Hera just felt frightened.

“Now,” said the Inquisitor, “let’s try this again.”

*

Agent Beneke came back inside almost as soon as the door was open, glaring at the Inquisitor. She had put her veil back in place and seemed more unapproachable than ever, looking back at him with cool, expressionless blue eyes.

“Well?” Beneke said. “Did she pass your little test, Inquisitor?”

“My master will retain his interest, but the Imperial Security Bureau may proceed however it sees fit,” said the Inquisitor.

“I fail to see how Hera Syndulla is Lord Vader’s concern,” Beneke snapped.

Hera flinched at Vader’s name, remembering that inhuman figure at the colony, and the things he had said about her father –

No.

Hera didn’t think about her father anymore.

“My master’s wishes,” said the Inquisitor, “are none of _your_ concern, Agent.” She turned to go, mounting the steps with unhurried strides.

“Inquisitor,” said Agent Beneke, just before she stepped through the door, “while you’re here, perhaps you’d like to pay an old friend a visit. Detention block CC-01, isolation cell 0169. I’m sure you remember the way.”

The Inquisitor’s shoulders went tight. Hera saw her draw breath as if to speak, then she stepped forward into the corridor and the door slammed shut behind her.

Beneke’s mouth flattened into a thin line.

Hera hadn’t moved the entire time the Inquisitor had been in the room, and she didn’t move now except to look slightly up at Beneke. “Did I pass?”

“You did exactly what I wanted you to do, Hera,” Beneke said, his mouth softening into a smile. He came over and put a hand on his shoulder, and she looked up at him hopefully. “You would be wasted on the Inquisition.”

“I don’t think that was a real test,” Hera said doubtfully, then glanced at him quickly to make sure that that was all right to say. Agent Beneke didn’t like it when she criticized other Imperials.

He didn’t look angry this time, though, just introspective. “No, Hera,” he said, “it was certainly a real test.”

Hera bit her lip. It hadn’t seemed like a real test, just like blind guessing at something she couldn’t see. “Agent Beneke?”

“Yes?”

“May I ask a question?”

He paused, then said, “Yes, of course, Hera.”

It was an unexpected concession, and Hera picked her words carefully. “What _is_ an Inquisitor? I know they’re Imperial officers like you, but –”

“They’re not very much like me,” Agent Beneke said. “The Inquisitors are –” He paused, as though searching for words. “Inquisitors are special agents of the Emperor, it’s true, and while there’s some overlap with the duties of the ISB, we have very little in common. But they lack an official position within the Imperial hierarchy; they answer directly to sector governors, their own commanders at their headquarters, or to the Emperor himself.”

“What do they do?”

“Anything they’re ordered to,” Beneke said. He gave her a meaningful look and repeated, “Anything.”

Hera looked down at her hands, thinking about the colony and wishing that she wasn’t. She didn’t think it was just Inquisitors who did that.

Beneke put a hand beneath her chin and tipped her head up to look at him. “A word of advice, Hera,” he said. “Stay away from Inquisitors if you can avoid it. They’re dangerous and unpredictable, wild cards in the Imperial system. They can’t be trusted.”

If they were all like the Mirialan, Hera didn’t _want_ to ever see another Inquisitor ever again, so she nodded silently.

Beneke released her, then patted her on the shoulder. “But there’s no need for you to concern yourself with it at the moment. I have some other tests for you, some very important ones.”

“What kind of tests?” Hera asked as he produced a datapad and turned it on.

“Some tests that I had to pull some strings to get,” Agent Beneke said. He looked down at her thoughtfully, then added, “They’re the entrance exams for the Imperial Academy. Do you want to serve your Empire, Hera?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, thanks to my lovely beta Xena.
> 
> For new readers, I do daily progress reports over on Tumblr, under the tag "[daily fic snippet](http://bedlamsbard.tumblr.com/tagged/daily-fic-snippet)," if you want to keep track of what I'm working on or get a hint of what's happening in the next chapter or two.


	7. Harvester

Hera woke up alone.

She lay still in her bunk without opening her eyes, listening for the sound of Kanan moving around the cabin, but all she could hear was the distant murmur of Chopper rolling around elsewhere in the _Ghost_. Sighing, Hera passed a hand over her eyes, then sat up, wincing a little as her bare feet touched the cold deck. She groped around for her slippers, found them, and slipped shivering out of bed. She kept the _Ghost_ warm, but leaving the nest of her blankets was always a wrench, and she hated being cold more than almost anything.

Her dressing gown was slung across her workbench. Kanan had given it to her months before he had gone to the Crucible, even before they had started sleeping together – the casual kindness making Hera, then less than half a year out of the Academy, suspicious of his motives – and it was still the softest, most comfortable garment Hera owned. Had ever owned. It was also the first material thing she had been given in almost five years that hadn’t been a reward, the way her handler or her instructors at the Academy had given her prizes.

Hera pulled it on and tied the sash in a bow, then went out into the corridor. It was early enough that neither Zeb nor Sabine was awake yet; Hera paused outside Kanan’s door, considering, then heard the faint sounds coming from the direction of the common room and went that way instead.

There was a virtual screen projected up from the holotable and datapads strewn across it, Kanan’s lightsaber propping a few of them up, but Kanan himself was nowhere in sight. Hera padded across the common room towards the galley, the door sliding open as she approached to reveal Kanan standing by the counter, barefoot and wearing loose sleeping pants and a worn red shirt. He was measuring out caf with his eyes narrowed to slits, but looked up as the door opened, his entire body going tense before he recognized her and he relaxed.

“Hey.”

“Hey yourself,” Hera said. She stood up on tiptoe to kiss him, her heels coming out the backs of her slippers. Kanan put down the spoon he was holding in order to wrap an arm around her waist and deepened the kiss. “Did you come to bed last night, love?”

“No.”

Hera frowned and leaned up to cup his face between her hands, studying him. He looked tiredly back at her, his eyes sunken; even after five years the faint scars on his cheeks and jaw from what had been done to him at the Crucible were still visible, if you knew what to look for. Hera had seen them when they were fresh and raw, after the Inquisition had sent Kanan back to her as a broken shadow of himself. Sometimes she still had nightmares about that. She knew Kanan did.

“Love…”

“Hey, you know me,” Kanan said softly. “I’ll be fine. I always am. I just didn’t want to keep you up.”

“I think we’ve passed that point, dear.” Hera said. She kissed him again quickly, then leaned past him to inspect the caf. “Make some for me too? I’m going to use the ‘fresher.”

“You got it.” He turned back to the counter as Hera stepped away from him, rubbing at her eyes.

She used the ‘fresher quickly, splashing water on her face to wake herself up, though she knew the caf would do better on that front than anything else. She had elected to stay on the Ghost rather than taking up Minister Tua’s offer of guest quarters in the Imperial Complex, partially because Zeb and Sabine probably would have stayed on the Ghost anyway and partially because after weeks in the Imperial Complex on Thyferra she just wanted to be in her own space. Besides, they were probably only going to be here for a few days at most; there was no point trying to get settled in.

Kanan was back in the common room when she returned, some of the scattered datapads now organized into piles. He passed her a steaming mug of caf as she settled down beside him, kissing her lightly on the mouth.

“What are you looking at?”

“I’m going through the cadet files from Lothal, both at this Academy and the others onworld,” he said. “I’m trying to see if any of them are likely to meet Project Harvester’s ‘special requirements.’” He punctuated the last two words with hooked air-quotes and an eyeroll, but the tightness in his jaw belied his light tone.

Hera wrapped her hands around her mug of caf and leaned against his shoulder, resisting the urge to warm herself up by crawling into his lap, as pleasant as that would undoubtedly be for both of them. Hera hadn’t exactly had a lot of up close and personal experience with human men other than Kanan, but she _had_ known a lot of them at the Academy or in the ISB, and she had eventually worked out that Kanan really did run a little warmer than other humans did. He never seemed to get cold, anyway, which made him the best heater Hera had ever found, and certainly the most enjoyable.

“And?” she prompted when Kanan didn’t go on.

“Mmm.” He took a breath, then turned the virtual display off. The lights in the common room brightened in response. “I was hoping I could just look at the lot and say that there weren’t going to be any candidates here – the usual cues have to do with exam scores, certain physical tests, a couple other things. Sabine was on the hot list back on Mandalore, but thankfully that’s one test she failed. If none of those markers are present, it’s not going to merit an Inquisitor’s special attention.” His mouth twisted. “Unfortunately that’s not the case here. I can probably skip the other Academies, but I am going to have to look at the kids in the Capital City one.”

“But probably none of them will meet the requirements,” Hera said, remembering what he had said yesterday.

“Here’s hoping.” Kanan picked up the nearest datapad, looked at it, then tossed it down again.

Hera took a sip of her caf and hummed appreciatively. “This is good. You should probably have some, since you made it.”

He started to reach for his own mug, then stopped, his fingers just brushing the handle. “I’ve already had about twelve cups. I think I’m starting to hear colors.”

“Mmm. Best stop and give it to me, then.”

Kanan grinned tiredly and pushed his mug towards her. He slumped back in his seat, rubbing a hand over his face; his eyes started to drift shut before he snapped them open again.

“Kanan, you have to stop doing this,” Hera said softly. “You know it doesn’t help.”

“Yeah, but I keep hoping.” After a moment he took the mug of caf back and threw back half of it in one gulp, wincing.

“Dear, you’re not going to be very impressive if you’re vibrating out of your skin.”

“I’m going to burn through it in about ten minutes,” Kanan said. “Unfortunately.” He rested his elbows on the table and rubbed his hands over his face again. “I think I’m getting too old to do this every time.”

Hera touched his back. “So stop trying. All it does is put off the bad nights for a little while, and they’re worse when they do come. You know that.”

“Yeah. I know.” He covered his eyes with one hand and said to the table, “Every day I have to do something like this is a day I wonder if I can live with it.”

Hera’s hand tightened on his shoulder. “We’re doing this for the Empire, Kanan. Some of it is unpleasant – some of it is awful – but there’s more to it than just you and I and the things we do. There’s a bigger picture you’re not seeing.”

Kanan’s mouth twisted. “Do you really think I care about any of that, Hera? Any of it at all?”

“Of course you do,” Hera said. “You’re a good person, Kanan. You know that –”

Kanan raised his head to look at her. “Hera,” he said. “I’m not a good person.”

“You care about people, Kanan,” Hera said, feeling his muscle shift under her hand as Kanan shook his head a little. “You do. You help people, even when you don’t have to. You hate it when you hurt people, even when you don’t have a choice. You wouldn’t be so upset about these tests if you weren’t a good person, if you didn’t care about what was going to happen to any of those cadets.”

He bit his lip and shook his head again, looking aside. Hera reached up with her free hand and touched his cheek, turning him back towards her. “Kanan,” she said. “I know terrible things happened to you at the Crucible. None of that changes who you are.”

“What happened to me on Mustafar five years ago doesn’t have anything to do with it,” Kanan said. “It didn’t help, but it didn’t make me either. When I went in there I was already the kind of person who could walk out alive and sane, and a good Je –” He stopped abruptly, then rubbed his hands over his face again. “I really shouldn’t have been.”

“Kanan,” Hera began again, then stopped, not knowing what else to say.

After a moment Kanan turned back towards her, tipping his head down against her shoulder. Hera wrapped her arms around him, stroking a hand over his hair, and pressed a kiss to his forehad.

“Hera,” he said softly, his breath warm against her neck, “you know I’ve never done any of this for the Empire.”

Hera didn’t say anything. Instead she kissed his forehead again, then tipped his head up so that she could kiss him properly.

Kanan kissed her back, desperate, as if afraid that she would vanish if he stopped. When he finally pulled back, cupping her face between his hands, there was a familiar wildness in his eyes, the fever heat that had come and gone ever since the Crucible had released him.

 _This is going to kill him one of these days_ , Hera thought, and could have wept. Instead she made herself say, “Can you do this, Kanan? If you can’t, I’ll do –” _Something_ , she meant to say, but she wasn’t a Force-user; she couldn’t do what Kanan could. The Inquisition had wanted Kanan because of what he was, what he was capable of doing; the fact that the Inquisition had interfered was the only reason the Bureau had let Kanan live after he had come aboard the _Ghost_.

“I can do it,” Kanan said, his voice utterly flat. “The Empire saw to that.” He took a breath, then let it out. This time when he spoke there was a little inflection in it, though barely enough to merit the name. “Do me a favor?”

“Of course.”

“Keep Zeb and Sabine out of the Imperial Complex today.” He bit his lip, then added, “I don’t want them to see this.”

*

Tatooine, not far from the nebulous boundary between the Mid Rim and the Outer Rim. Being here made Ahsoka’s skin itch, as though the planet itself was telling her to leave. She hadn’t been in the system since the Clone Wars more than fifteen years ago – one of her first missions as a padawan – and despite the passage of time, she was pretty sure that she would have remembered if she had felt this sensation then. Of course the Force didn’t bother to drop a hint about _why_ it didn’t want her here, so Ahsoka gritted her teeth and bore it because it was the most convenient Hutt system for this meeting, and besides, it was too late to reschedule now.

This time she had arrived early, watching the spectacular binary sunset from the rooftop terrace of a restaurant in Mos Eisley. The food had been surprisingly good, considering that Tatooine didn’t exactly have much of a culinary reputation. Since then Ahsoka had been lurking on the rooftops surrounding the usual types of alleys where she and Barriss met, wondering if Barriss would show up with a squad of stormtroopers or just a trio of other Inquisitors. Ahsoka knew she could take any Inquisitor but Barriss – and maybe Caleb Dume – in a fight, fair or otherwise, since none of them had the training needed to become a truly great duelist. Jedi younglings were trained almost from birth to fight with a lightsaber; no Inquisitor had that kind of background.

The last glow of the setting suns had faded when a hooded figure appeared at the far end of the alley, her arrival barely stirring the Force. She was looking around, dark head turning from side to side as if expecting Ahsoka to appear from the walls of the narrow alley. She was also, more importantly, alone.

Ahsoka waited until Barriss was beneath her, then straightened up from her crouch, pulled her primary lightsaber out from beneath her poncho, and stepped off the edge of the roof.

Barriss was already moving even before Ahsoka landed, her cloak and skirts flaring out around her as she spun, lightsaber hilts flying from her belt into her hands. Ahsoka had ignited her blade, though, and Barriss had to throw herself into a backflip to avoid it as Ahsoka lunged forward. An instant later both her blades were ignited, beating back Ahsoka’s furious attack.

Ahsoka felt the beat of her surprise in the Force, seeing her blue eyes wide and stunned over the fall of her black veil before they went cold. She swung at Ahsoka and Ahsoka slid beneath the scarlet blade of her lightsaber, coming up to slam a kick into her chest as Barriss spun to meet her. Barriss staggered back, faltering for an instant, and Ahsoka grabbed for the Force, yanking a flowerpot she had spotted earlier down towards Barriss’s head.

Barriss swung blindly at it with one of her lightsabers, shattering the pot and sending a cascade of dirt and a Rylothean climbing-vine down onto her head. As the vine wrapped around her neck, hissing furiously, Ahsoka reached out with the Force to pull both lightsabers out of Barriss’s hands. They deactivated almost instantly and Ahsoka caught them in her free hand, stretching her own lightsaber out towards Barriss as the other woman fought herself free of the plant. She finally dragged it off her neck, taking her veil with it, and flung them both aside.

Without the veil Ahsoka could see that her expression was completely furious. Barriss raised her fists, dark lips skinning back from her teeth as Ahsoka pointed her lightsaber at her. “Isn’t that usually my entrance?”

She took a step back as Ahsoka stepped towards her, her gaze flickering between Ahsoka’s face and the burning white blade of her lightsaber.

“Circumstances change,” Ahsoka said. “You should know that better than anyone, Inquisitor. And yet you’re still up to the same old tricks.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Barriss snapped.

“No?” Ahsoka said. “‘I have a clue for you, Ahsoka. I need you to do a favor for me. Oh, by the way, you might get killed because it’s going to explode.’ I can’t believe I really thought you were sincere this time.”

Barriss blinked, color rising in her cheeks. “What are you talking about? I gave you the kyber crystal shipment –”

“Oh, you mean the kyber crystal shipment that tried to kill us?” Ahsoka sneered. “ _That_ was certainly convenient.”

Barriss’s face did something complicated before going blank. “What are you talking about?” she repeated. “You destroyed the convoy. I saw the reports before I left Naboo to come meet _you_.”

Ahsoka advanced a few further steps, backing Barriss up against the nearest wall. Barriss raised her hands, confused and angry.

“The kyber crystal blew itself up,” Ahsoka said. “It took the convoy with it. We were meant to be caught in the blast wave and boy, doesn’t that sound familiar, Inquisitor? I can’t imagine where I’ve seen _that_ before.”

Barriss stared at her, then blinked once, slowly, and said, “You think _I’d_ do that?”

Ahsoka felt her lips curl back from her teeth. “I can’t imagine else who would.”

Barriss straightened upright, then took a step forward, making Ahsoka shift the angle of her lightsaber so that Barriss didn’t impale herself on it. “Let me tell you something, _Fulcrum_ ,” she snapped. “If I want you to die – _when_ I want you to die – I’ll do it myself. No tricks. No explosions. None of your _friends_ , no other Imperials, no civilians, just you and me and our lightsabers. And that’s a promise.”

Ahsoka stared at her for a long moment. Barriss stared back, her blue eyes bright with sincerity, and something about that – about the tremor in the Force – finally made Ahsoka deactivate her lightsaber and return it to its hook.

“I need those back,” Barriss said after a moment, her gaze flicking to the curved lightsaber hilts Ahsoka was still holding in her other hand.

“Maybe later,” Ahsoka said. She reached beneath her poncho to hook them onto the back of her belt, shifting her stance to account for the unaccustomed weight. “If I’m feeling generous. It’s not like they’re really yours in the first place.”

“I can’t go back to the Crucible without them,” Barriss said through her teeth.

“That’s cute how you assume you’re going back.”

“I’d like to see you stop me.”

“Try me.” Ahsoka took a deliberate step back from Barriss and crossed her arms over her chest, tilting her head slightly to one side. When Barrriss didn’t move, she said, “Tell me about the kyber crystal. Don’t even think about leaving anything out.”

Barriss shifted, her hands flaring out at her sides before tightening into fists. “I don’t know anything!”

“I don’t believe you,” Ahsoka said flatly. “If you didn’t know anything, you wouldn’t have been so eager for me to destroy it.”

“I don’t even know what’s even possible to do with a crystal that large!” Barriss spat. “I just –” She raised one hand, then let it drop. “A kyber crystal is a weapon. It can only be used as a weapon.”

“Squeamish, Inquisitor? That’s a first.”

Barriss shot her a poisonous look. “I was supposed to meet it at the destination. Another Inquisitor saw it off from wherever it started from.”

“Which was?” Ahsoka said, raising one eyebrow.

“I don’t know. I knew the vector the convoy was on, that’s it. I didn’t even know the final destination because the orders hadn’t come in yet.”

Ahsoka felt her jaw tighten, but the Force told her that Barriss was telling only the absolute truth. “Who was the Inquisitor on the other end?”

“I don’t know,” Barriss repeated. “The Hunter was assigned to that sector, but he’s dead, so it can’t have been him.”

“Can you find out?” Ahsoka said. “I’m sure that information’s on the Imperial milnet somewhere.”

Barriss blinked once. “The Inquisition doesn’t work like that,” she said. “The only way I’m going to find out is if someone tells me, and there’s no reason for them to do so. This isn’t the Jedi Order. We don’t exactly gossip over drinks.”

“Are you even allowed drinks?”

Barriss just looked at her.

“I’ll take that as a no,” Ahsoka said. “Can you at least tell me anything actually useful about the crystal? Like who signed the order?”

“Grand Moff Tarkin,” Barriss said tightly. “That’s for the crystal. Moff Ssaria signs the orders for us.”

Well, that didn’t tell Ahsoka anything. All she knew about Ssaria was that she was the moff in charge of the Crucible, and Tarkin had his fingers in every pie in the Outer Rim.

“Can I have my lightsabers back?” Barriss said through her teeth, every word seemingly dragged out of her. “Or is there something else you wanted to know?”

The words came out before Ahsoka could think of anything more pertinent. “ _Did_ you know about Luminara?”

A muscle twitched in Barriss’s jaw, then she glanced aside. “Yes.”

Ahsoka closed her hands into fists, clenching them so tightly that she could feel her nails through the soft leather of her gauntlets.

“Are you still interested in the Stray?” Barriss said abruptly, each word so clipped it was barely intelligible.

“What’s it to you?”

Barriss reached into one of her belt-pouches, making Ahsoka tense before she removed a datachip. She tossed it at Ahsoka, and Ahsoka caught it out of the air. “The ISB surveils its own people,” she said. “Then the monitoring teams pass around any particularly juicy holos until half the Bureau’s seen them. The Stray’s girlfriend is a pretty little thing, tailhead or not.”

“Would you stop _calling_ her that?” Ahsoka snapped, unable to hold the words back. “Someone might think you were raised in a barn. Or an Imperial Academy.”

Barriss snorted softly, but didn’t say anything.

Ahsoka slid the datachip into an inner pocket, hoping that it wasn’t an explosive and resolving to have QT-KT check it out before she actually did anything with it. Barriss was still staring at her expectantly, and after a moment Ahsoka reached behind herself and pulled her lightsabers off her belt. She tossed them at Barriss, who caught them easily, relief washing so quickly across her face that Ahsoka almost thought she had imagined it.

They looked at each other for a long minute, then Ahsoka said, “I’ll be in touch, Inquisitor,” and turned away. She felt the back of her neck prickle, but couldn’t hear Barriss move. Barriss was still standing completely still when Ahsoka left the alley behind entirely.

*

Making sure that Zeb and Sabine weren’t anywhere near the Imperial Complex for the day was easy: neither of them had wanted to be there anyway. They had both left the _Ghost_ after breakfast to explore Capital City; Hera just hoped that they didn’t do anything that might get them arrested, since dealing with the local authorities was always fun when she was explaining why that had been a very bad idea. Kanan usually didn’t bother explaining unless he was in a good mood; he just swept in and glared until the locals realized that they were dealing with an Inquisitor and either did what he wanted or passed out from sheer terror.

“You should probably go with them,” Kanan said as they made their way across an open courtyard that connected the landing bays where the _Ghost_ was parked to the part of the complex that housed the Academy. Chopper was rolling along behind them, grumbling noisily to himself. “I don’t really want you to see this either.”

Hera raised an eyebrow. “That’s sweet, dear.”

“I’m serious.”

“So am I.” Her mouth tightened involuntarily as a squad of eight cadets passed in front of them, all of them marching in unison. White uniforms and helmets made them completely anonymous; all Hera could tell was that they were young and female and had probably been put in the same squad because they were all about the same height, making their formation aesthetically pleasing. A lot of academies liked to be precise like that; the one on Serenno had done the same thing. Of course, Hera had spoiled that pretty picture, since she hadn’t been able to wear a helmet, and some of her instructors had never forgiven her for that. Among other things.

She swallowed back her distaste and made herself say, “I might as well do some headhunting for the Bureau while I’m here. You never know what you’ll find, even on a backwater like Lothal.”

Kanan snorted softly. “Yeah, I’ve heard that one before.”

Hera touched the back of his hand, making him look down at her. “I’ve found some interesting things on backwater worlds,” she said. “Some of them weren’t even completely useless.”

One corner of Kanan’s mouth curled up in a faint grin, and he brushed her fingertips with his own, his touch light through her gloves, before he drew back.

The massive doors that connected the training center to the courtyard were open, revealing various squads of cadets under the tutelage of their instructors. Hera’s lekku prickled at the memory and she locked her hands together behind her back, her shoulders tensing in remembered anticipation. Imperial academies were the same all over the galaxy, and Hera’s time at the academy on Serenno hadn’t been a pleasant experience.

_You’re not a cadet anymore, Syndulla. They can’t touch you._

She hadn’t been a cadet for a long time now. She had been an agent longer than she had been a cadet. Yet being back at an academy still made her wince in anticipation of being shouted at by one drill sergeant or another, or the snide remarks of the other cadets, the ones who hadn’t wanted a green-skinned tailhead girl wearing the same uniform as them, or –

“Hey.” Kanan’s voice was soft and impossibly gentle compared to what Hera thought of as his Inquisitor voice, but she still flinched.

He put his hand against her wrist, just touching it and not trying to grab her, and turned his body a little to shield her from the sight of the training center. That alone was enough to make Hera’s shoulders slump a little in relief, her lekku going slack as she tilted her head back slightly to look up at Kanan’s concerned face.

“No one’s going to make you go in there, Hera,” he said.

Hera swallowed and folded her fingers into his, feeling his grip tighten on hers. “I know. It’s just a building, Kanan. It doesn’t mean anything.”

“It means something to you.”

She glanced aside. “It’s just a building. It’s not even the same building. We’re parsecs away from Serenno.”

“Hera…” 

She turned back to Kanan and leaned up to kiss him, a light brush of her lips over his. They usually weren’t demonstrative in public, but right now Hera wanted the reassurance more than she cared about her reputation. Besides, it wasn’t as though they were going to be on Lothal for long enough for it to matter. The entire ISB had already dragged her reputation through the mud five years ago; she didn’t give a damn what some two-bit officers on a backwater world at the far end of the Empire thought of her.

“I’m fine,” she told Kanan. “I just needed a minute.”

Normally she avoided the academies at whatever Imperial Complex they happened to be working out of, on the rare occasion they were at one at all; the one time that someone had actually needed to deal directly with Academy officials, when they had recruited Sabine, Kanan had handled it all on his own while Hera ran the op they had been on. The prickly commandant of the Mandalore Imperial Academy had reacted better to a human Inquisitor than she would have done to a Twi’lek ISB agent.

“You can take the day,” Kanan said. “There’s no reason for you to be here. You don’t need to do this to yourself.”

“The fact that _you’re_ the one telling me that is a pretty good clue that I do,” Hera said. She took a deep breath and smoothed her hands nervously down the razor-creases of her uniform trousers. “I’m an Imperial officer, Kanan. I can’t avoid the academy forever, and I shouldn’t have avoided the one back on Mandalore. Sooner or later I’m going to have to do a tour of duty as an instructor, anyway.”

That was the usual way it went, though Hera had her doubts on whether High Command would allow her to do so. Hera could do her job, but she knew that there were a lot of people within the service’s command structure that doubted a Twi’lek was good for anything, and those were the sort of people who wouldn’t want to risk her corrupting the Empire’s youth.

“Hera…”

She folded her hand around his again, rubbing her thumb over his gloved palm, and smiled up at him. Kanan arched one eyebrow and Hera said without prompting, “I love you.”

Kanan’s concerned expression went soft and affectionate all at once. He was leaning down for another kiss when a voice said, “Inquisitor! I was told that you’d be joining us today.”

Kanan’s shoulders went tight. Hera let go of his hand as Kanan turned to face Commandant Aresko, straightening her back and raising her chin. Aresko was a thin, sepulchral human male with grayish skin who looked at Hera as though he wasn’t quite sure why she was here. His companion, the sturdily built Taskmaster Grint, eyed her up and down with a familiar glint in his eyes that Hera knew meant that he was picturing her naked and liking what he saw. Hera had seen that expression a _lot_ during her time in the service.

“Agent…Syndulla,” Aresko said, with a barely noticeable pause between the words. “I wasn’t aware that you would be here too.”

Hera gave him a thin-lipped smile. “The Imperial Security Bureau is always on the lookout for outstanding cadets that might be interested in something a bit less glamorous than some of the other options, but with greater rewards.”

“Is recruitment one of your duties, then, Agent Syndulla?” Grint said, his smirk suggesting he knew _exactly_ what her “duties” were.

Kanan turned his head to glare at Grint, his eyebrows climbing upwards, but all Hera did was cross her arms over her chest and say, “I’m an active field agent. My only duty is to defend the Empire.”

Grint’s smirk grew, while Aresko just looked faintly uncomfortable. His voice sharp enough to cut through durasteel, Kanan snapped, “Let’s get this over with. I doubt any of the cadets on your little backwater have much to offer the Empire aside from a few more bodies to fill out the thin white line, but I’ve got my orders.”

Both men looked taken aback by both his tone and his glare, their attention immediately leaving Hera in favor of Kanan. That was one of the good things about traveling with an Inquisitor, Hera had found. If Kanan wanted people to pay attention to him, no one even looked at Hera.

With Chopper trailing behind them, the four of them marched off towards the open space of the training center. Stormtroopers on duty turned their helmeted heads slightly to watch them pass; Hera saw several cadets break ranks to nudge each other and whisper, their expressions impossible to read behind their helmets but their heads turning quickly as they looked from Kanan to Hera. It was an open question as to which of the two of them the locals found more fascinating.

“We have over three thousand cadets at academies across Lothal,” Commandant Aresko told Kanan proudly. “The best of them come here, to the Academy for Young Imperials in Capital City. While it’s only a one year junior academy, every year many of our graduates go on to study at other academies offworld.”

Hera couldn’t help rolling her eyes. Junior academies were better than nothing, but they were mostly aimed at turning out stormtroopers, not officers or other specialists. Hera’s alma mater, the Imperial Academy on Serenno, had been a three year academy; she had seen cadets who had transferred in from junior academies like this one struggle to keep up with the academic and physical regimens there. Some succeeded, of course; the closest Hera had ever come to friendship at the Academy had been with transfer cadets determined to excel against all odds. Others couldn’t handle the workload of a real academy and washed out or were transferred elsewhere.

“I’m not interested in your cadets’ exam scores,” Kanan said, sounding bored. He was using his Inquisitor voice, his Core accent dripping disdain.

“I am,” Hera put in. Both Aresko and Grint looked at her with as much surprise as if one of the AT-DPs parked outside the training center had just spoken. “The ISB has certain requirements for its recruits, both academic and physical.”

“I assure you, Agent Syndulla,” Aresko said stiffly, “our cadets are more than capable of meeting any…requirements. Some of them have set Academy records.”

“Quite the accomplishment, I’m sure,” Hera said dryly. If any of those scores had ever come close to meeting or exceeding Empire-wide records then Aresko would have led with that.

Kanan glanced at her and lifted the corner of his mouth slightly for an instant, letting Grint and Aresko see his amusement. “Well, Commandant,” he said, the expression already gone. “Let’s see these standouts of yours and get this over with. The Imperial Inquisition has better things to do with its time than watch schoolchildren play games.”

Hera gave him a sharp look. The accent covered up most of his discomfort, but Hera knew him well enough to recognize it anyway.

They were barely ten steps into the training center when Hera’s comlink beeped to signal an incoming transmission. Hera checked the source, then sighed and said, “It’s Naboo. I’d better take this now.”

Relief flashed across Kanan’s face so quickly that Hera might have thought that she had imagined it if not for their earlier conversation, but all he said was, “Give Agent Beneke my regards.”

“If I gave him your regards, dear, he’d have a lightsaber through his heart about now,” Hera said; the only person that Kanan hated more than the other members of the Inquisition was her handler.

Kanan’s lip curled. “Well, I keep asking, and you keep saying no.”

Aresko and Grint both looked baffled by this exchange. Chopper, who didn’t like Agent Beneke any more than Kanan did, snickered softly.

Hera’s instinct was to kiss Kanan goodbye, but that wasn’t particularly smart here in the middle of the Academy. Instead she touched his arm lightly and said, “I’ll see you later.”

He nodded solemnly.

“Gentlemen,” Hera said to Aresko and Grint, then turned away, heading back towards Imperial HQ. She stepped into the first empty office she found, pulling a miniature holoprojector out of one of her belt pouches; it was already calibrated to her comlink.

Her handler’s hologram sprang up in miniature in the palm of her hand as she activated the projector. Roberto Beneke hadn’t changed much over the past decade; he now had gray touching his brown hair, but otherwise he was the same man who had come into her cell at the Spire all those years ago, a sturdily built human male a few inches shorter than she was, though that wasn’t evident from the hologram.

He looked at her with concern. _“Hera, I saw that you’d left Thyferra. Where are you now?”_

“My team’s on Lothal, Agent Beneke,” Hera said. “Another Inquisitor was killed and Ka – the Inquisitor had to take over his next assignment.”

 _“Oh, yes, the unfortunate incident on Stygeon Prime; I heard about that.”_ Beneke made a dismissive gesture with one hand. _“That’s understandable, I suppose. Though I don’t quite understand why you’re there as well? Your last report prior to your departure from Thyferra suggested that you and your team would be there for a few weeks longer; you wouldn’t have required the Inquisitor for follow-up.”_

Hera blinked. “The matter didn’t require ISB follow-up,” she said. “Did you say Stygeon Prime?”

Stygeon Prime was where she had been held after the colony on Zardossa Stix had been destroyed, though Hera hadn’t found that out until much later.

 _“There was a break-in at the Spire,”_ Beneke said. For a moment concern made his brow furrow, then he said, _“It’s not relevant; no prisoners escaped and there were minimal casualties. Don’t worry about it, Hera.”_

“If no prisoners escaped, then why was someone breaking _into_ a prison?” Hera asked, her free hand clenching into a fist at her side before she remembered that Beneke would be able to see that. “Why was the Hunter there? There isn’t usually an Inquisitor stationed at the Spire, is there?”

 _“That’s a question you’ll have to ask your Inquisitor, Hera,”_ Beneke said, his frown deepening at this line of questioning. _“You know the Crucible doesn’t like to share information with the Bureau.”_

The Crucible didn’t even like to share information with its own Inquisitors, which Beneke knew perfectly well. They liked sharing information with the ISB even less, which Beneke and Hera had both learned when she and Kanan had walked into the ISB headquarters on Naboo to find Darth Vader and the Hunter waiting for them, unbeknownst to Beneke or the rest of the ISB. The Crucible did what it wanted to whom it wanted and damn the consequences.

Hera knew that very well.

 _“Hera, I’m very concerned about your decision to leave Thyferra,”_ Beneke went on. _“We’ve spoken before about how unwise it is to compromise your operations in order to follow your Inquisitor when he’s assigned elsewhere –”_

Hera frowned before she remembered to smooth the expression out; Beneke didn’t like it when she frowned. “The operation wasn’t compromised, Agent Beneke. The Inquisitor and I both judged that as we left it, the situation on Thyferra was well within the capability of the local authorities to deal with. Our presence during the follow-up would have made the native insurgents start up again as soon as we left. If you read my report, sir –”

 _“I read it, Hera.”_ Beneke regarded her solemnly. _“The local authorities corroborated your report. It’s still my opinion that you should have remained onworld for a few more days, at least; the Inquisitor is perfectly capable of requisitioning his own transport.”_

“Sir, with all due respect, you weren’t on the ground on Thyferra.” Not to mention that Beneke hadn’t been in the field in at least five years – not since before Kanan had been taken away by the Crucible – but Hera knew better than to say as much. “My team is a laser scalpel, sir, we’re not a bacta patch. That’s not our job.”

_“I’m aware of your mission, Hera.”_

Hera glanced down. “Of course, Agent, Beneke. I’m sorry.”

Beneke paused before finally saying, _“In this case I’ll accept your judgment, Hera. The situation on Thyferra does seem to be within the capabilities of the local authorities, now that Governor Jariott has been removed from a position where he can negatively impact the Empire’s bacta production. That was good work, Hera, even if I do wish you had stayed onworld a few days longer. Pass my compliments on to your team.”_

“Thank you, Agent Beneke. Probationary Agent Wren and Mr. Orrelios will be glad to hear that.” She didn’t mention Kanan. Beneke had already tried to have Kanan killed once, and that had been _before_ he had become an Inquisitor. His promotion hadn’t done anything to endear Kanan to him, since as far as Beneke was concerned he was a physical representation of the Crucible’s ongoing interference in the Bureau.

_“Putting aside the specifics of the Thyferra operation, you know that this isn’t the first time that you’ve ended an operation early so that you can accompany the Inquisitor. That’s starting to raise some eyebrows here in Theed, Hera. I know that your team has a very high success rate, but Theed is beginning to worry that you’re prioritizing your relationship with the Inquisitor over your duty. In the Inquisitor has proven perfectly capable of completing his own assignments without your aid.”_

Hera had a flash of pure panic that she just barely managed to keep from showing. She knew the only reason that the ISB allowed their partnership to persist was because they were more effective together than they were individually, but it was unheard of for an Inquisitor to have a permanent assignation to another branch of the service. All it would take would be one word from Ailsa Palak, the director of the ISB, to the moff in charge of the Crucible and it would be over. Hera would never see Kanan again.

She had lost Kanan once, the first time he had gone to the Crucible. She wasn’t going to let it happen twice.

She had to take a moment to regulate her voice before she said, “Sir, in every case where accompanying the Inquisitor would compromise my own assignment we’ve opted to operate separately. I’ve never abandoned a mission just because the Inquisitor has been assigned elsewhere. That’s well accounted for in my reports, sir.”

Beneke didn’t say anything for long enough that Hera almost stopped breathing, her free hand clenched so tightly that the leather of her glove strained over her knuckles. At last, Beneke said, _“I’m aware of that, Hera. I’ve pointed that out every time the matter in question has come up. Perhaps if you and the Inquisitor operated separately for a time –”_

Hera caught her breath, a protest already building into a scream in her throat. “Sir –”

 _“And this incident on Thyferra,”_ Beneke went on without waiting for her to respond. _“The Inquisitor’s injury. That’s unusually sloppy for both of you.”_

It was like a bucket of cold water had been thrown over her, and all Hera could do was stare at the hologram, trying frantically to think of anything to say. She couldn’t let Beneke find out about her parents. She _couldn’t_. She just – she just couldn’t.

_Why, Syndulla, why do you care so much? They betrayed you. They abandoned you._

“Yes, sir,” she managed to say, the words barely a whisper. “I agree, sir.”

_“What happened?”_

Hera swallowed. “The Inquisitor and I were checking out a lead. There was a sniper; they must have been following us.”

_“They?”_

“I don’t know whether it was a man or a woman, sir.”

_“Reports from the local authorities say that there were some signs of a scuffle on the ground, but you didn’t mention one in your report.”_

“There – there wasn’t one. The locals must have been mistaken, sir.”

Beneke studied her for a long moment. _“I see,”_ he said at last. _“Well, I’m glad to see that you’re safe, Hera. Do you have any idea how long you’ll be on Lothal?”_

Hera let her breath out, on firmer ground now. “Not long, sir. Maybe a few days – tomorrow is Empire Day, of course. Is there something here I should be looking at?”

Beneke pursed his lips, thinking. _“Lothal is such a backwater that the Imperial presence there is somewhat surprising, natural resources or not,”_ he said. _“There’s been some insurgent activity in the area, but nothing that suggests a permanent cell in the sector. You might look into any recent disturbances, see if there’s something the locals overlooked when making their reports to Coruscant. These things happen.”_

“Yes, sir.”

She was about to sign off when Beneke said, _“There is one thing, Hera. Technically speaking it’s out of ISB jurisdiction, but it came across my desk when I was checking up on the sector.”_

There were only two things that were out of ISB jurisdiction, Hera knew. The Emperor’s personal concerns – and the Crucible’s.

_“There was a supply convoy that was destroyed about twelve hours ago several systems away from Lothal, at one of our less-traveled hyperpoints. No survivors. I’ll pass along the coordinates; I’d like you to go and check it out. Let me know your conclusions.”_

“Yes, sir,” Hera said. “Will you send me the incident report too?”

Beneke frowned. _“I don’t have the clearance for it,”_ he said. _“Just let me know what you find. Oh, and Hera –”_

“Sir?”

_“Don’t mention this to your Inquisitor.”_

*

The Academy on Lothal wasn’t the first Imperial academy Kanan had visited, but it was the first one that was still all in one piece, probably because Sabine hadn’t had a chance to set any bombs off in it yet. It also didn’t look anything like the training facilities at either the Jedi Temple or the Crucible, to Kanan’s quiet, unvoiced relief. Not that he would have said as much to Hera, let alone the locals.

“All the cadets you flagged are here for your perusal, Inquisitor,” Commandant Aresko said as he, Kanan, and Taskmaster Grint all stepped up onto a hover-platform that was currently resting a few centimeters above the facility’s floor. Chopper used his repulsors to follow them up, silent and wary for once.

Twenty-four cadets in pristine white-and-gray uniforms and face-concealing helmets looked back at them, all of them radiating nervousness of varying degrees in the Force. Aresko and Grint they might have been used to, but an Inquisitor was something else entirely. To them, Kanan might as well have been – probably was – something out of a story. A nightmare. Most Imperials went their whole careers without ever seeing an Inquisitor.

For a moment he felt the vast gap between them stretching out, the Force opening up around him without any effort on his part. The only being in this room who even considered him a person was, perhaps ironically, Chopper. To the rest he was only an extension of the Empire’s might, something that was barely human, barely sentient.

Some days, today among them, he wished that was true.

Commandant Aresko was still talking, despite the fact that Kanan had tuned him out a couple of minutes ago. He crossed his arms over his chest, letting the buzz of the commandant’s voice settle into white noise, and studied the ranks of cadets. They were only arrayed three deep and while they stood mostly still, their heads moved from time to time, shoulders and legs shifting as the ones in the back tried to get a closer look at Kanan.

Yeah. An Inquisitor visiting was probably the most excitement Lothal ever got.

Kanan wasn’t going to test every cadet on the planet, since that would have taken months. Instead he’d told the _Ghost_ ’s computers to filter for the top ten percent in Lothal’s academies, then spent a sleepless night going through all the files, looking at test scores, athletic results, and medical records to narrow it down further. Project Harvester’s standards for Force-sensitivity were fairly low, all things considered, but that meant that everything else had to be within the top ten percent of academy standards for potential candidates. Harvester didn’t want cadets who couldn’t get higher than average scores on all exams, both academic and physical. Midichlorian count was nice, but anyone whose test results weren’t equally high would probably have a fatal accident long before they could graduate.

Fortunately for the good of Kanan’s already hopelessly fragmented soul, no one on Lothal had that particular combination. Midichlorian count was hidden among the rest of the biometrics in the cadet personnel files, though he doubted that anyone else would have even thought to look for it or known what it meant if they did. He wasn’t even sure that anyone back at the Crucible had known what they were or what that meant. Force-sensitivity was a sliding scale at best, and even the Jedi hadn’t fully understood it. Caleb Dume, not even half-trained when his world had ended, certainly hadn’t; most of what Kanan knew he had pieced together from barely-remembered lectures almost a decade and a half ago. Still, he probably knew more than almost anyone else in the galaxy, including his trainers back on Mustafar. That was a grim thought.

The Force was still around him, except for the usual eddies and currents that formed around anyone Force-sensitive that didn’t know enough to manipulate it. Every one of the cadets in front of him had a midichlorian count high enough to register – not high enough that the Jedi Order would have actually bothered sending someone out to perform the usual checks, but high enough to make the Crucible take notice, whether or not they really understood what that meant. What mattered at this point was whether the kids could use the Force, either consciously or not, and the Force alone help him, Kanan would give anything to find that not one of them could do anything more than find lost keycards or win at death dice nine times out of ten, all the tiny unconscious ways that a weak Force-sensitive might exploit their talent. Not enough for the Crucible. Not enough for Harvester.

Force help him, Kanan wanted this over with.

“Enough,” he said evenly, his voice falling naturally back into the accent he had had for the first fourteen years of his life. Imperials expected an Inquisitor to sound like a native Core Worlder; lucky for them, Kanan was one, even if he’d originally worked the accent out over the course of the chaotic years that had followed Kaller. Using it helped, a little. It made him the Inquisitor, not Kanan Jarrus.

Aresko stopped mid-sentence, taken aback by his tone. “Inquisitor?” he said, and there was a soft murmur – not quite words – from the ranks of cadets.

“Talking doesn’t get anything done. Your cadets are supposed to be halfway decent? Prove it.”

Records couldn’t do anything other than narrow down the options. The Empire was actually less efficient than the Order had been, since they were recruiting teenagers and adults rather than infants. The former would never be anywhere near as good as a Jedi trained almost from birth would be, but the Empire didn’t _want_ people that good. Force-users with backgrounds like Kanan’s or the First Inquisitor’s were too dangerous without something to control them. There was a reason that every other Jedi who had gone through the Crucible had died. Sometimes Kanan envied them.

Aresko raised a hand and the cadets snapped immediately to attention. At some unseen command, the back two ranks stepped aside, leaving the first eight cadets remaining where they were. The hover-platform lifted up at the same time that the floor beneath the cadets began to descend; Kanan tilted his head a little to see it settle about two stories beneath them, the cadets already beginning to disperse from their orderly file.

“This is The Well,” Aresko told Kanan, who just nodded; both the Temple and the Crucible had had the same thing, though he doubted that this one was as fatal as either’s. The Jedi had trusted that their students had the skills to survive; the Crucible had wanted to weed out the weak. “Its purpose –”

“I know what its purpose is.”

Aresko offered Kanan the control pad; he started to wave it off, then changed his mind and took it. As the two officers and all twenty-four of the cadets stared expectantly at him, he handed it to Chopper, who hooted in delight and took it with one outstretched arm.

“Well, Chop?” Kanan said. “Let ‘em have it.”

“Er, Inquisitor –” Aresko began delicately. “Are you sure that’s really the best –”

There was a strangled shout from beneath them as Chopper jabbed at one of the controls on the pad, and one of the cadets yelled, “What the – the floor’s electrified!”

Chortling happily, Chopper continued to press buttons apparently at random. Kanan peered over the edge of the hover platform to see more platforms sliding out of the wall and rising up from the floor, while other panels in the wall shot gouts of flame or laser bolts.

That was, by the standards of the Jedi Temple where Kanan had done his initial training, fairly standard, but even Taskmaster Grint looked a little alarmed. “Didn’t know it could do that,” he admitted.

 _Whoops_ , Kanan thought; that meant that they’d be taking that little revelation out on the rest of their cadets. Well, the Jedi had trained their younglings this way; he supposed the cadets could deal with it, even without the Force to help. If it killed too many of them even the Empire would stop eventually. He was pretty sure, anyway.

“The other Inquisitor –” Aresko said during a lull in the screaming.

“– is dead,” Kanan said, which made both Aresko and Grint turn and stare at him; presumably they were under the impression that Inquisitors were immortal. Having killed a few of them himself, Kanan was under no illusions about _that_. “So I wouldn’t put too much stock in anything he did.”

He was fairly certain he knew which test the Hunter had used, but there were ways and ways to test for Force-sensitivity, and for once Kanan was going to rely on his instincts. And hope that, at least this one time, they were going to be helpful.

He could feel the Force moving in little eddies and flurries around the cadets down in the Well. None of them were aware of it, though a few were acting on a little more than just instinct to stay ahead of the chaos Chopper was unleashing on them. The original goal of trying to get out of the Well before anyone else had long since been discarded in favor of simply staying alive. Kanan watched them for a few minutes longer, most of his attention on the Force, then said abruptly, “Get them out of there, Chop, that’s enough.”

Chopper grumbled a protest, but a moment later the gouts of flame ceased spurting out of the walls and floor, the laser bolts stopped firing, and the floating panels sank back into their original positions, the floor reforming to rise up with the by now very scorched-looking cadets standing on it. Kanan felt a flicker of concern, but they were all on their feet, and though a few were nursing superficial injuries, all of them came raggedly to attention as it settled into place.

Grint and Aresko both looked at Kanan.

“Get the next batch in there,” Kanan said. “I’m done with this lot.”

Eight down, sixteen to go. _Please_ , Kanan begged the Force silently, _please, if you’ve ever loved me, don’t make me send any of these kids to Harvester or the Crucible. Don’t let me fall that far._

*

_Nine years ago_

It was strange being back in real clothes after so long in the prison jumpsuit that Hera had begun to think of as a second skin. Agent Beneke had brought them to her cell, carefully folded, along with new underwear and a gray cap that would fit over her lekku. Hera had been glad that he had left so that she could change alone, working the hood of her jumpsuit off over her lekku, peeling the wrappings off the sensitive skin there. Having them free was odd; Hera suddenly felt terribly, painfully exposed, self-conscious of the clan markings on her lekku even though there was no one else there to see. When she turned they moved more freely than they had when wrapped, the cool air of her cell shuddering across them and making her gasp. She had had them unwrapped before, but only for a few minutes at a time when washing – sponge-baths from the sink in a corner of her cell – or when changing from one jumpsuit to another, something else that occurred only at irregular intervals. But this time felt different, somehow; Hera was more aware of them than ever, of the weight of them, the way the air felt against them, the surprising looseness in the way they moved without the hood and wrappings to hold them in place.

She let the hood fall back and reached up with both hands to touch her lekku, shivering at the feel of her fingertips skating over the smooth skin. For a long few minutes she just stood there holding them, running her hands up and down their length, over their tips, pulling them over her shoulders to look at the round white curves of her markings as though seeing them for the first time. They were her clan markings; by tradition, only members of the curial caste got them. Males were only marked three times – sometimes four – but females got them much more often, at fixed points in their lives. Hera would get her next markings on her fifteenth birthday.

Hera would have gotten her next markings on her fifteenth birthday, if it hadn’t already passed.

She swallowed and let go of her lekku, pushing them back over her shoulders, and went back to taking off her jumpsuit. She had more white markings curving over her shoulders and down her upper arms, pale against her green skin, and more at the small of her back; she had gotten those when her menses had started, back on Ryloth, before the Empire had come and everything had still been normal. The ones on her lekku she had gotten when she had been little, the year before the Clone Wars had started. The next ones would be – would have been – on her hips and forearms. High caste Twi’lek women were always decorated.

Hera’s mother wasn’t, but Alecto Syndulla hadn’t been born into the curial caste, and she had refused to be marked after she had married Cham’s father. She had been the only bare-skinned woman at the parties Hera vaguely remembered being forced to go to – well, the only one who hadn’t been there as a servant, anyway.

She licked dry lips and pushed her jumpsuit down her bare green legs, kicking it away, then pushed her underwear down. By now Hera was used to washing in the little sink in her cell, and it went fast – not that Twi’leks really needed it, anyway, washing with actual water was a luxury on Ryloth that until the past few centuries had only really been common among the higher castes. They hadn’t had running water in the colony the first three months.

She walked naked back to the bunk where the white cadet’s uniform was sitting, with new undergarments neatly folded on top. Hera hesitated for a moment, looking at them, then leaned slowly down to pick them up. They were white, like the uniform, and as she unfolded them she saw there were letters painted on the inside – her name and a number. It was the same number as on her jumpsuit, but with a different prefix. Hera swallowed, rubbing her finger over the letters, then leaned down to pull the underwear on. The bra had her name printed on the band too, and when Hera checked, so did every other piece of the uniform, down to the boots and the gray cap, which matched the detailing on the uniform.

Hera put them all on, moving more and more slowly with each piece of clothing, until she was sitting on the edge of the bunk with her boots on and the cap in her hands. She stared down at it, breathing hard, then reached behind herself so that she could fit her lekku into the openings of the cap, sliding it up over her head. Her lekku hung free behind her, supported a little by the cap but not as confined as they had been in the wrappings of her jumpsuit.

Slowly, Hera leaned down to pick up the discarded jumpsuit. She folded it carefully and set it down on her thin pillow, then straightened the pillow and pulled up the blankets, making the bed as best she could.

Her hands were very green against the white of her uniform, and it was a relief to pull on the black gloves that went with it. She sat down on the edge of the bunk, the way she had dozens of times before, and folded her gloved hands in her lap as she waited for Agent Beneke to come back.

After a moment she turned her head, her lekku swaying, and looked at the Imperial cog on her left shoulder. If her father knew – if her father, or her mother, could see her now –

“They left you,” she whispered to herself in Twi’leki. “They don’t matter.”

Still –

She snapped her head up as the door to the cell slid open. Agent Beneke appeared in the doorway, smiling when he saw Hera.

“That uniform suits you,” he said, not coming down the stairs this time.

Hera made herself smile a little, uncertain of what kind of response he wanted, and stayed seated until he said, “Well, Hera? Aren’t you coming?”

Hera stood up slowly, her lekku bouncing at the motion. Her boots echoed oddly on the durasteel floor of the cell in a way that the soft soled jumpsuit hadn’t, making her flinch a little. Without the hood covering her ear-cones, she felt like she could hear _everything_ , even the soft rustle of her clothes as she walked. It was so much fabric, so different from the skintight jumpsuit she had been wearing. It all felt stiff and starched, except for the boots, and the upright collar hadn’t been meant for a Twi’lek and cut into the back of her neck. Her bare lekku felt cold, but the rest of her –

Hera was warm for the first time since she had left – been taken from – Zardossa Stix.

She mounted the steps and was almost at the top, where Agent Beneke was waiting, when she stopped and looked over her shoulder, her lekku brushing her back as she did so. From up here, the cell looked smaller than it had felt when she was in it, when it had been her whole world. Her neatly made bunk with the jumpsuit folded on top of it looked like something out of one of her old doll’s houses. The holoprojector Agent Beneke had brought her, the one with the cartoons on it, was on the floor in the corner between the bunk and the wall, sitting at an off-angle that made Hera want to run down and readjust it before Agent Beneke could see.

She jumped when he put a hand on her shoulder, turning her back towards herself and the open door. “Come along, Hera,” he said. “We don’t want to miss our shuttle.”

Hera took a deep breath, squaring her shoulders and feeling her lekku bounce with the movement. She was a Syndulla. She could do this.

She followed Agent Beneke out into the corridor. It was the first time that she had been out of her cell since she had arrived, and she couldn’t help looking around, her lekku brushing against her shoulders every time she turned her head. Behind her, the door to her cell slammed shut, and she jumped, looking back at it again. It was just a door, no different from the other doors lining both sides of the corridor.

So many doors.

 _Alecto Syndulla was being held just down the hall_ , Agent Beneke had told her all that time ago. _She didn’t even look for you._

Hera’s hands balled into fists at her sides. Her mother. Her _mother_.

“Hera?” Agent Beneke said, looking back at her.

She realized that she had stopped walking and hurried to catch up to him. “It’s nothing, Agent Beneke. It’s just – strange.”

“I imagine it must be, Hera,” he said kindly.

He led her through near-identical corridors only differentiated by the stormtroopers standing guard or walking patrol in them, most of them as still as statues and nearly as strange. At last Beneke led her out into a big empty room open to the outside, and Hera gasped, resisting the urge to wrap her arms around herself as she started to shiver.

“Is that – that’s _snow_?”

Beneke blinked, just once and fast, but not so quickly that Hera didn’t see it. “That’s snow, Hera,” he said. “Is this the first time you’ve seen it?”

She nodded, enthralled, and actually took a step forward before remembering herself. “I’ve only seen it in holos before.”

“Ah. Well, you’ll probably see quite a lot of it at the Imperial Academy you’ll be attending. Serenno has all four galactic standard seasons.” He put a hand on her shoulder and steered her forwards, out onto the landing platform.

Hera couldn’t stop looking around. First at the snow – which was falling from the sky, landing on her shoulders and face and lekku – then at the tall mountains surrounding them, and then, even more intriguing than that, at the four V-wing starfighters parked on the landing platform. Their pilots were nowhere in sight, but there were more stormtroopers standing watch around the platform, and she didn’t know if she would have been able to contain her curiosity if she hadn’t thought that they would shoot her.

Then she saw the shuttle.

It was a _Theta_ -class 2Tc personnel transport shuttle, only a few years old. Its wings were folded up since it was parked on the landing platform, letting Hera see the Imperial symbol painted on their undersides. The starship’s specs weren’t available to the public, but Hera had read a profile on it in a holomag before – before. It was supposed to have quad laser cannons in front as well as a tail gun, and some of the best shielding Cygnus Spaceworks put out. Rumor was that the Emperor’s personal shuttle was a _Theta_ -class; they were _that_ good.

Hera would have cut off one of her lekku for the chance to fly one.

Agent Beneke looked at her, then at the shuttle, then back at her again. “Do you like starships, Hera?” he asked.

“I love them,” Hera said, enraptured. “I’m a pilot, you know, and one of these days I’m going to fly away from –” She stopped, not knowing how to end that. When she had been younger it had been Ryloth, then Zardossa Stix. Now –

Now she didn’t know.

Agent Beneke smiled slowly. “Well,” he said, “if you succeed at the Academy, you may be able to fly your own ship one day.”

Hera tore her gaze away from the shuttle to look at him. “Really?”

“You have my word,” he said. “Give the Empire the best you have, Hera, and it will reward you in turn.”

Her own ship, Hera thought. It was what she had dreamed about since she had been old enough to want anything. The Syndulla family owned starships – the ones it had used for business before the occupation, as well as the yacht _Syndulla’s Gamble_ – but none of those would ever really be hers, and Hera wanted her _own_ ship, one where _she_ was the captain.

Agent Beneke started walking towards the shuttle. Before he could tell her to come with him, Hera followed, her feet starting to drag before she reached the bottom of the ramp. She looked up it at Agent Beneke standing in the entrance to the ship, then started to look back before she stopped herself. Where she had come from didn’t matter. What mattered was where she was going.

Hera went up, into the belly of the Imperial ship, and this time she didn’t hesitate.

*

_Present day_

Hera was sitting on the _Ghost_ ’s ramp when Kanan made it back to the hangar bay, her cuirass off and her uniform jacket open at the collar. She was resting her crossed arms across the tops of her knees and made a small, forlorn figure as Kanan made the long trek across the now empty hangar – the locals had moved all the shuttles and TIEs that had been here when the _Ghost_ had arrived.

She raised her head at the sound of Kanan’s heavy tread on the metal floor, then stood up and came over to meet him. “Hey –” he began, but before he had a chance to say anything else Hera put her arms around him and pulled him down into a tight embrace.

She didn’t kiss him, just clung to him, absolutely still except for her breath and the faint shiver of her lekku. Kanan hugged her back, feeling worry build in the back of his throat. “Hey,” he said again, softer this time. “What happened? What did Agent Beneke say?”

“Nothing important,” Hera replied after a moment. She pulled back enough to lean up and kiss him quickly on the mouth. “How did it go?”

Kanan shrugged. “Well, Chopper had the time of his life.”

“And?”

He shook his head, feeling relief settle into his shoulders. “I had to pull a couple of the cadets out for a second test, but – no. Thank the Force,” he added quietly. “You might have a look at the Leonis kid, though, if you’re still thinking about recruiting. The kid’s pretty sharp. The Crucible had him flagged, but he doesn’t meet Harvester’s special requirements, lucky for him.”

Hera shrugged back, her lekku drooping. “Maybe later.” She flattened her palm against his chest and said, “Come inside.”

Kanan let her draw him up the ramp into the _Ghost_ ’s hold, reaching out with his mind to hit the control to close the ramp behind then. Hera smiled a little, worryingly close to tearful, and reached up to pull him down into a kiss. “I love you,” she said against Kanan’s mouth, pulling him back towards the ladder leading up in the ship’s living quarters. “I love you, I love you, I love you –”

Kanan pressed her back against the ladder, letting his hands settle on the familiar curves of her hips. Her mouth opened easily under his, her fingers already busy on the straps holding his armor in place. “I love you too,” he told her. “What happened?”

“Nothing. I just want you.” She got his armor off and Kanan let go of her to catch it before it fell, tossing it onto the seat of one of the speeders parked against the wall. He stepped back so that Hera could turn and climb up the ladder, then followed her up.

Her cabin was the first one in the corridor outside the cockpit and she pulled him into it even before the cockpit door had slid closed behind them, pulling insistently at his tabards. Kanan helped her get them off, then undid the rest of the fastenings on her uniform jacket and pushed it off over her shoulders. They were both naked within a few minutes, Kanan’s lightsaber and Hera’s blaster both hitting the ground with heavy clunks before she pushed him back onto her bunk and climbed on top of him.

Kanan grinned up at her, giddy with a combination of desire and sheer relief, but didn’t get a chance to say anything before Hera leaned down and kissed him again, long and slow and very thorough. Kanan ran his hands up the line of her back, feeling her settle more comfortably on top of him.

“I love you,” he breathed as she finally pulled back. Her lekku were falling forward over her shoulders, her markings seeming to glow white in the room’s dim lighting. They had been together for six years; he still thought that she was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen.

Hera smiled down at him, then shifted her hips against him, making him groan. “I know,” she said. She kissed him on the mouth again, then moved her lips lower, to his jaw, and then his neck and lower still.

“Hera,” Kanan gasped, folding one hand into the rumpled sheets beneath him.

“I need you,” she said, her voice muffled against his hipbone. “I love you. I need you. I love you.”

“Hera –”

She raised her head to grin at him, her eyes dancing, then dropped her head again and Kanan swore, clutching at the sheets.

“You were saying, dear?” Hera murmured a moment later, her breath warm against his skin.

“I don’t remember,” Kanan managed to say, and saw Hera smile again.

“Good.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was written prior to the release of _Servants of the Empire: The Secret Academy_ , as well as the Rebels season two premiere and subsequent episodes, and does not incorporate information from either.
> 
> For new readers, I do daily progress reports over on Tumblr, under the tag "[daily fic snippet](http://bedlamsbard.tumblr.com/tagged/daily-fic-snippet)," if you want to keep track of what I'm working on or get a hint of what's happening in the next chapter or two.


	8. Sparks

Hera was wrapped around Kanan when one of their comlinks went off.

She raised her head from his shoulder, blinking sleep out of her eyes. She had been in that drowsy post-coital stage, half-awake but not particularly aware of anything other than warmth and Kanan beneath her and a pleasant soreness, but the insistent beeping of the comlink dragged her up out of that.

“Mine or yours?” Kanan mumbled.

Hera raised herself up to see, making him grunt as she accidentally elbowed him in the chest. “Yours,” she said, spotting it blinking amidst the pile of Kanan’s discarded blacks on the other side of the room.

He groaned, reached for where it would normally have been without looking, and then when his hand came up empty finally raised his head. “Ugh,” he said, then stretched out a hand in its direction. The comlink raised up from the pile of clothing and floated over to him; Kanan caught it out of the air and slumped back onto the bunk, rubbing his free hand over his face.

“This is the Inquisitor,” he said, his voice slurring between his Rim accent and his Core one.

_“Inquisitor? This is Minister Tua. I’m afraid that we have, ah, a slight situation –”_

“If she’s having a ‘slight situation’ in her bedroom I’m going to shoot her myself,” Hera muttered, leaning over Kanan’s shoulder to listen.

“Be nice, Hera,” he said, scrubbing a hand over his eyes. “That only happened once.”

“This is me being nice,” Hera said. “And once was once too many.”

There was a long pause from the other end of the comlink, then Tua said, _“Ah – Inquisitor, Agent Syndulla, there’s been an…incident. At one of the data processing stations onworld. Your assistance would be deeply appreciated, and I assure you there’s nothing, ah…”_

“We know what you mean,” Kanan said, rolling his eyes at Hera. “What kind of incident?”

 _“One of the technicians downloaded the entire Imperial database into his implant and vanished,”_ Tua said. _“A Rodian named –”_ There was a momentary pause as she presumably looked it up. _“– Tseebo. We have all available resources searching for him – well, those that aren’t going towards the Empire Day preparations – but of course your personal attention would be appreciated –”_

Hera flopped onto her back. “Is she serious?”

 _“Of course I’m serious!”_ Tua said indignantly.

“We’ll be happy to help, Minister,” Kanan said, as Hera pressed her hands to her face and wondered why anyone ever let provincials do anything. At least it would give Zeb and Sabine something to do. “Put together a file and I’ll send my astromech to pick it up and make copies for the members of my team.”

 _“Thank you,”_ Tua said sincerely, just before Kanan cut the connection and tossed the comlink back down onto the floor.

“Why is it always something?” Hera groaned as Kanan straightened up and went to pick his clothes up off the floor. She would have preferred a late morning in bed with Kanan to getting dragged out of it because a few locals couldn’t keep track of one technician. Well, she preferred a late morning in bed with Kanan to most things, if she was being honest.

“Just lucky, I guess.” He turned back to kiss her as she sat up. “Hey. It’s one missing tech. What’s the worst that could happen?”

“You have _met_ us, haven’t you?” Hera said. She curved a hand over the back of his head to pull him in for another kiss, and Kanan dropped his clothes to put his hands on her shoulders, deepening the kiss.

“All right,” he said eventually when they had finally parted. “Who’s going to wake the kids up and tell them the good news?”

*

Empire Day was the kind of holiday that Ezra had – to say the least – mixed feelings about. Each year it was a struggle between staying in his tower, locked away from everyone and everything, and going to Capital City to work the parade crowd. The latter usually won out, if only because the Imperials always ensured a turnout – sometimes at blaster-point – and it was a good way to make three times his usual haul in an hour. It almost made up for having to watch the Empire parade its walkers and its starfighters and its seemingly endless ranks of white-clad stormtroopers, all while thinking _if it wasn’t for these monongs I’d still have my parents._

Some years it was easier to stay in his tower.

Today, though –

It was like something in Capital City was _calling_ to him. Ezra hadn’t heard that sound – or whatever it was – again, not since the starship with the TIE escort had passed him, but he had found himself drawn back to Capital City over and over again since then. He hadn’t spent the night, since he wasn’t dumb enough to try and hole up in any of his old hidey-holes, and it wasn’t like the tower was that far away by speeder bike anyway. But the past couple of mornings he’d come back to Capital City like a magnet seeking true north, wandering through the streets and over the rooftops without really knowing what he was looking for. Somehow he always seemed to end up on the outskirts of the Imperial Complex, watching stormtroopers, TIE pilots, and other Imperials pass beneath him without ever seeming to look up. Once he’d seen a girl in brightly-painted Mandalorian armor and some kind of giant furry purple alien walk past on their way into the city; Ezra had followed them for a couple of blocks before getting bored, since they weren’t really doing anything, just walking around. He had no idea what they had been doing in the Imperial Complex, though.

When he had left Capital City last night the whole place had been swarming with stormtroopers; he’d seen TIEs headed out in the direction of the outlying villages, though Ezra couldn’t imagine what they could possibly be looking for. The last time he’d seen that many bucketheads at one time Governor Pryce’s pet anooba had gotten away and Minister Tua had panicked, so this was probably something just as stupid.

The Imperial presence was a little lessened when Ezra got back the next morning. After a few minutes of consideration, he decided to lock his speeder bike in the shed behind his parents’ old place; he’d used his other hiding places the previous few days and he didn’t have a habit of using the same one twice in a week. As he clambered up the side of the building, using an old drainpipe to pull himself up, he thought he heard a sound from inside, but that was impossible. It had been sealed off for years; even Ezra had never been back, not really. For some reason he’d taken his key with him when he had left the tower that morning, but it wasn’t as if he expected to use it.

There might be fewer than there had been last night, but there were still plenty of stormtrooopers in the streets, as well as a couple of walkers whose cabs he could see over the rooftops. Who knew what _they_ were doing out here; usually on Empire Day they were busy getting shined up for the parade. It wouldn’t do for anyone to forget the reason that the Empire felt safe bossing everyone on Lothal around, after all, Ezra thought, backing up so that he could make the leap from one rooftop to another. In the narrow alley beneath a Sullustan he didn’t recognize was taking an envelope of white powder from one of the local spice dealers, a scarred Rodian whose thugs had shaken Ezra down a couple of times in the past.

Ezra landed silently on the opposite rooftop, then turned and went back to the side to peer down at the alley, ready to duck out of sight if either the Sullustan or the Rodian looked up. The Sullustan was already walking away, the envelope hidden in his hand, while the Rodian tucked the credits he had gotten in exchange inside his jacket.

Boring, Ezra thought; he’d seen that plenty of times in the past. He turned to continue on a meandering path that would eventually drop him at the end of the parade route where Minister Tua would give her speech in the evening. There was plenty to do on a holiday like Empire Day. All the cantinas would be full, whether or not their owners supported the Empire, and people would be taking advantage of the holiday to get an early start on their drinking. Perfect way for a boy to make his living.

*

Cham was not expecting to turn a corner on his own ship and nearly walk face-first into Secchun Fenn, of all people.

He took a hasty step backwards, already starting to compose an apology before he recognized Secchun and it died on his lips. She had been walking with Mishaan Secura, who looked sheepishly away rather than meet his eyes.

 _Wonderful_ , Cham thought, and said, “Fenn. What are you doing here?”

There was undoubtedly a more polite way to say that, but it came down to about the same thing, and the last thing Cham wanted was Secchun Fenn on his ship, speaking to his people. They weren’t technically enemies, and hadn’t been even when the Republic still existed, but the Fenns and the Syndullas had been at each other’s throats since the galaxy had been young. “Political rivals” was at best a polite description, though technically accurate.

“One of my people needed to use your medical facilities,” Secchun said. “I thought I’d tag along, since there was something I wanted to discuss with you in person.”

Only a lifetime in politics kept Cham from flinching back instinctively; he had no idea what Secchun wanted from him and frankly, he thought that he would be happier not knowing. But the other thing he had learned from a life in politics was that it was always better to know than to willingly keep oneself in ignorance.

He made his voice mild as he said, “If you had commed ahead I would have made arrangements so that we could speak, but since you’re here now…” He let the words trail off, arching one brow.

Secchun inclined her head slightly in acknowledgment. “In private?”

That was the last thing Cham wanted, but he said, “We can speak in my stateroom,” knowing that Secchun, at least, wouldn’t take that as an invitation for anything other than conversation. He would rather go to bed with a live viper than with Secchun Fenn, and suspected that she felt the same about him.

“I’ll be on the bridge, General Syndulla,” Mishaan said, nodding to Secchun with carefully considered respect before turning to Cham.

He resisted the urge to frown after her as she left, wondering why she had been talking with Secchun, then put it aside to ask about later.

Secchun fell into step beside him as he turned back in the direction of his quarters, which he had just left. She walked easily, her head held high, and the fact that on the way there they discussed nothing of particular consequence made the back of Cham’s neck itch in increasing alarm, wondering what in blazes she was up to. Secchun Fenn hadn’t outlived her entire family and survived the viper pit that was Ryloth under the Empire because she was an easy mark.

He showed her into his stateroom and resisted the urge to leave the door open just in case she tried to stab him when his back was turned. The good thing was that even in the worst of situations there was always ritual to fall back on; Cham poured them both small cups of tzikeh, a sharp Rylothean liquor traditionally drunk at political negotiations between clan leaders. He didn’t have much of it left, but it wasn’t as though he drank it often.

Secchun sniffed at it, then nodded to him in appreciation, waiting until he had sat down on the opposite end of the small couch before she said, “Alecto isn’t here?”

Alecto hadn’t shared his stateroom or his bed in several years, but Cham wasn’t about to tell Secchun that. Instead he just said, “Not at the moment. Should I send for her?”

Secchun leaned back against the arm of the couch, dangling the small glass between two fingers. “That’s unnecessary. My business is hardly her type of concern, anyway.”

“What do you mean by that?” Cham said, not allowing her to see him tense. He was out of practice with these games, and even when he had been forced to play them on a daily basis in the Curia, he hadn’t enjoyed them. He and Secchun were from the curial class, the highest caste on Ryloth. Alecto had been born a plebeian. Still a citizen, still with all the rights that that entailed, but so outside high society that the leap was almost unheard of. Cham’s peers had never let her forget it.

“Clan business, Syndulla. A joining of our two houses.”

Some of Cham’s alarm must have shown on his face, because Secchun laughed, sharp and brittle. “Don’t look at me like that, Syndulla, I wouldn’t have you for love or money.”

“The feeling’s entirely mutual, I assure you,” Cham said. “Not to mention the part where I’m already married.”

She snorted softly but didn’t comment on that. Instead she took a sip of her drink, then swirled the liquor around in the glass, looking at it contemplatively before she said slowly, “This fleet is weak, Syndulla. The last Synedrion meeting showed that. And these recent trips of yours away from the fleet haven’t gone unnoticed, the visits of your…friend.”

“This fleet has stood for a decade, Fenn,” Cham said. “And my personal business is neither yours nor the Synedrion’s.”

Secchun leaned forward, suddenly serious. “You are this fleet, Syndulla. If it believes you’re weak, then it will fail. I’ve seen it before.”

“In case you forget, I was still in the Curia when the Empire came fifteen years ago. I’ve seen it too. And this fleet is not Ryloth –”

“No,” Secchun said. “It’s you. And I may hate you for it, Syndulla, but you are this fleet. Every ship, every being, every Twi’lek in this fleet lives or dies by your word. You may deny it but you and I both know it’s true.” She paused. “And I wasn’t talking about Ryloth when the Empire came.”

Cham took a sip of his own tzikeh, feeling the liquor burn its way down his throat. “Despite what my opponents like to claim, this isn’t a dictatorship. You know that Free Ryloth would never stand for that. The Synedrion –”

“Exists. For whatever good that does. You and I both know that they won’t go against anything you or your proxies decide.”

Cham opened his mouth to protest, but the truth was that Secchun wasn’t entirely wrong. But she wasn’t entirely correct, either. “This is neither the Resistance of the Clone Wars or the Free Ryloth that existed on Ryloth a decade ago,” he said after a moment. “If I say jump, every Twi’lek in the fleet doesn’t say, ‘how high?’”

“Oh, they might have a few more questions,” Secchun acknowledged. “But sooner or later their feet will leave the ground.” The fingers of her free hand curled into a loose fist and she tilted her head to one side. “Have you thought about what will happen to this fleet if you die, Syndulla?”

Cham raised one brow. “Planning something, Fenn?”

“Syndulla, if I wanted you dead, do you think I’d warn you first?”

“Certainly. It would put me off my guard.”

The corner of Secchun’s mouth lifted a little in something that wasn’t quite a smile. She took another tiny sip of her tzikeh, then rested her elbow on the back of the couch and let the glass dangle between her long white fingers. “You don’t have an heir, Syndulla,” she said bluntly. “When you die, the Syndulla main line will die with you. And so will the fleet.”

“Hera’s not dead,” Cham snapped before he could stop himself.

For a moment the expression on Secchun’s face warred between sympathy and pity before smoothing out to cool amusement. “That may be,” she said. “But your daughter isn’t here, either, and even if she was – do you really think that the fleet would accept her because her name is Syndulla? They all know what happened to her.”

 _No, they don’t_ , Cham thought, but he didn’t say anything. Secchun didn’t know anything about Hera, and he wanted to keep it that way. Until they knew more – until Hera was here and safe – it wouldn’t do for anyone other than he and Alecto to know the truth. _Whatever that is._

Secchun was watching him with sharp black eyes. “You’ve never asked why I came to the fleet,” she said.

“You’ve never given me much opportunity,” Cham pointed out. “You’ve avoided speaking to me as much as you can over the past few years.”

She flicked her fingers as though to toss aside the words. “How much do you know about what happened on Ryloth after you left, Syndulla?”

“I’ve heard about it from other beings in the fleet.”

“Were any of them actually there?” Secchun said archly. “Other curiates?”

“Other patricians. You know that you and I are the only curiates left in the fleet.” Few of the original seventy curial families, the main lines of the old clans, had remained on Ryloth anyway by the time that the Syndullas had left the planet; most of the Curia had been made up of electors a few ranks lower than the Syndullas and the Fenns. Secchun was old blood; she wouldn’t consider them worthwhile.

Cham ran a finger over the side of his glass, then raised his gaze to meet Secchun’s eyes. “I know that the first thing the Curia did after the Empire allowed it to reform was to force all members of my clan offworld,” Cham said. “Even those who had never had anything to do with Free Ryloth. The ink wasn’t even dry on the Emperor’s decree when you brought it before the Curia. What remained of the Curia.”

Secchun’s lip curled. “Ryloth had to be seen to be loyal,” she said. “You shamed our people, Syndulla.”

“ _I_ shamed our people?” Cham said, his eyebrows rising. “You practically tripped over yourself to kiss his –”

“Because you forced us there, Syndulla! If you hadn’t been so eager to play hero –” She stopped herself before she finished the sentence, her jaw working. “You shamed our people,” she said again, “and all of Ryloth suffered for it. Other worlds have committed smaller crimes and suffered more for it. It was on the Emperor’s mercy that he didn’t destroy us all.”

“Mercy?” Cham said. “Is it mercy that he forced our people to become a shadow of themselves, that he –”

“You weren’t there, Cham!” Secchun spat, leaning forward, the glass of tzikeh dangling forgotten from her hand. “You made that mess and then you left us to pick up the pieces, to go begging at the Emperor’s feet –”

“It was the Emperor that pushed us there –”

“You have never thought about anyone other than yourself!” Secchun snapped. “Not once in your life! And everyone around you suffers for it – Ryloth, your caste, your clan, your family. If for one moment you had ever considered anything other than your own pride, then maybe –” She stopped and drew in a deep breath, her lekku shivering. “I didn’t actually come here to argue.”

“You do realize this is why we never married, don’t you?” Cham said, aware that his right hand was clenched into a fist inside his sling.

“Well, that and the fact that if I had been forced to marry you, I would have poisoned your caf years ago,” Secchun said. She looked at the tzikeh she was still holding, then drank the rest of it, leaning over to set the empty glass down on the messy table beside the couch.

“If we had been married, I would have let you,” Cham said, doing the same. The tzikeh burned going down, the sharp, familiar taste of a lost world. He hesitated for a long moment, then said, “I know Gatan wasn’t with you when you arrived.”

Secchun’s gaze slanted sideways for a moment, her eyes going hooded before she looked back at Cham. “After you left Ryloth, after the Empire allowed the Curia to reform, Moff Mors pulled out most of the stormtroopers except around Imperial bases in favor of a native police force, Twi’lek volunteers trained by the Empire. A good thing, the Curia thought. The fewer stormtroopers on the streets of Lessu, the better. There were still curfews, still restrictions, but the curfews were later and the restrictions were fewer. It was almost normal.”

Her fingers flexed. Cham fought the urge to speak, waiting for her to continue.

“My husband and our two oldest sons were out one evening,” Secchun said slowly. “Nothing should have happened; Gatan and the boys were meant to be back well before the curfew. But…something did happen. Maybe the speeder broke down, maybe they lost track of time, maybe Gatan stopped to help someone – you know he was always like that.”

Cham nodded. Secchun had married the younger son of one of the lower caste patrician families in her clan; Cham had known Gatan Fenn socially but they had never particularly been friends.

“They never came home,” Secchun said. “Nawara and I woke up to an Imperial officer knocking on our door, telling us that there had been an incident. Gatan and the boys had been out after the curfew and had been stopped by the security force. The Imperials said that there had been a firefight, that Onel – that my oldest son – had been killed, Gatan and Thamir arrested for treason.” She looked up at Cham. “My husband would not have committed treason. Neither would my children.”

She plucked at a loose thread on the couch, then shrugged roughly. “The entire Curia had heard by the next session, of course. Things became…difficult…for me on Ryloth, for me and the members of my clan.”

“Your husband and son?” Cham asked, though he already knew the answer.

“I don’t know,” Secchun said. She ran a hand over the lower half of her face, her expression briefly bleak. “I suppose we have that in common, Syndulla.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Yes,” Secchun said. “You should be.” She sat back again, her jaw set, and pulled one leg up onto the couch in front of her, her booted foot dangling over the side. Except for her rather plain attire, she could have been at any townhouse or villa on Ryloth. For some reason that made Cham even more uneasy.

“I’m sorry to hear about Gatan and your sons,” Cham said again. “But to tell me that isn’t why you came here, is it? Not after all these years. You want something from me.”

“I want something that will be good for this fleet,” Secchun said. “The same as you.” She paused, watching him, and then said, “Syndulla and Fenn are the only two high caste curial families in the fleet now. This fleet is divided; the last Synedrion meeting showed that well enough.”

Cham scowled. “What do you want, Fenn?”

Secchun put her head slightly to one side. “Your daughter is gone, Syndulla, and I’m sorry for that, because no parent should have to lose their child. But you have a niece in the main line.”

“Xiaan?” Cham said, blinking.

“And I have a son,” Secchun said. “The children are young yet, but a long engagement will give them time to get to know each other. I was thinking that your girl could spend half her time on the _Mercy Kill_ and Nawara could spend half of his here, on the _Forlorn Hope_ , and after they’re married –”

“Fenn, what could I have possibly said to make you think that I’d agree?” Cham said, staring at her.

“Because you know it’s a good match,” Secchun said, leaning forward. Her expression was intent. “It will be a show of unity for the fleet. The girl survived her ordeal; she’s clearly got a spine –”

“Xiaan is sixteen years old,” Cham snapped. Even high caste families seldom arranged marriages that young, and betrothals had been falling out of favor even when Cham’s and Secchun’s clan heads had been trying to negotiate theirs thirty years earlier. “I don’t think she’s ever even met Nawara.”

Secchun’s youngest and only remaining son couldn’t be much older than Xiaan anyway, even if Cham didn’t remember his exact age.

“That’s why I suggested a long engagement,” Secchun said. She raised one pale eyebrow. “Unless of course you have another plan for the girl.”

“‘The girl’ has a name,” Cham said.

“Stop thinking with your heart and think with your head for once,” said Secchun. “You know you won’t get a better offer for her and you know that this will be good for the fleet.”

She glanced up as someone rapped sharply on the door; a moment later it slid open, which meant that there was only one person it could be, since no one else had the entry code.

“Cham, you were supposed to –” Alecto stopped abruptly as she spotted Secchun on the couch, her eyebrows climbing. “Fenn.”

“Alecto.” Secchun stood up. “Think about it, Syndulla,” she said, looking down at him. “It will be good for the fleet. And it’s the only offer for her that you’re going to get.”

“I’ll consider it,” Cham said, watching Alecto’s gaze fix on Secchun like a gutkurr after prey. “Do you need an escort back to the landing bay?”

“I can find my own way,” Secchun said. She nodded to Alecto as she stepped past her. “Thanks for the drink.”

The moment she was out of the room Alecto slapped the control panel to close the door behind her, then stalked over to the couch to stare down at Cham. “What is Secchun Fenn doing on this ship?” she asked. “I don’t think she’s ever condescended to set foot on a single Syndulla ship the entire time she’s been in the fleet.”

“She hasn’t,” Cham said. He tipped his head towards the couch; Alecto dropped down into the spot that Secchun had been occupying. “She wants Xiaan to marry her son.”

Alecto stared at him. “No.”

“Do you really think I would make that up?”

Alecto started to stand; Cham lunged forward to catch her wrist to stop her. “Let go of me,” Alecto snapped. “I’m going to go throw her out an airlock.” She paused, staring at him. “If you actually agreed –”

“For once in your life give me some credit,” Cham said. “Though she isn’t wrong. It would be a good match.”

Alecto tugged free of his grasp but sat back down, her lips curling back from her teeth. “Gods, why are all you patricians so heartless? Xiaan will never agree.”

“I know,” Cham said tightly. “Do you really think that I’d do that to her after what she and Doriah went through?”

His wife stared at him for a long moment – too long – before finally glancing away. “No.”

Cham rubbed a hand over his jaw, more surprised by Alecto’s concession than he had been by her disapproval.

Without looking at him, Alecto said, “Do you think she chose now to ask because Doriah isn’t here?”

“Alecto, I would be surprised to learn that Secchun knows that Doriah even exists,” Cham said. “And she had damned well better not know that Doriah isn’t here, because if she does, that means someone on this ship told her about Fulcrum.”

*

Doriah Syndulla wanted to kill something, and at the moment he didn’t particularly care what or who, as long as it was wearing the Imperial symbol.

He bounced a knee in nervous anticipation, his hands locked together on top of his thighs and his head bowed, his lekku slumped forward over his shoulders. All around him, the other beings from Free Ryloth who had come on this operation were doing about the same, each one readying themselves for a mission that was equally likely to end in success or failure. Success meant nothing, another day in the status quo; failure meant death or worse.

Doriah had lived the worse before. None of the others had.

He glanced up over his clenched fists, letting his gaze drift through the small shuttle. It was a star commuter shuttle, the kind millions of beings took on short inter-planetary hops every day; it wouldn’t raise an eyebrow arriving at any spaceport in the galaxy as long as the transponder ID matched up. Fulcrum’s astromech was piloting, humming a little to itself where it was plugged into the controls with the blue blankness of hyperspace streaking by in the viewport.

Fulcrum herself – a tall Togruta woman maybe five years older than Doriah’s twenty-four years – was seated on one of the shuttle’s front seats, her legs crossed and her hands resting on her knees. She hadn’t said anything since they had entered hyperspace a few hours ago; Doriah wasn’t sure if she was asleep or just pretending to be. He could never sleep before an op, though Zabo, one of the other three Twi’leks on the shuttle, had been snoring for the past hour. The others had all been quiet since they had left – the Rodian Kaylani listening to headphones and occasionally bobbing her head along to the beat of whatever music was on her datapad, blue-skinned Edeleh checking his weapons over and over again, Doriah’s wingmate and occasional co-pilot Numa obsessively trying to beat the latest level on whatever datapad game she was addicted to this week. It was all familiar from a dozen similar ops – well, except for Fulcrum. That was new.

Doriah had been dreaming of the attack on the colony when Xiaan woke him up by climbing onto his bunk and shoving her datapad into his face. “I found it,” she had said.

“Found what…?”

“The planet the convoy came from. There’s only one world on that vector it could have been.” She looked at him expectantly as Doriah pushed himself upright, rubbing at his eyes.

“Okay,” he said obediently; Xiaan had the best head for maths of anyone he had ever met, and when he had gone to bed last night she had still been sitting on her bunk in the cabin they shared, engrossed in her calculations. “Where? And am I going to have to wake up Uncle Cham or can it wait for morning?”

“Lothal,” Xiaan had said. “The convoy came from Lothal.”

Which was where they were headed now. Fulcrum had come back, had some kind of argument with Cham Syndulla that Doriah hadn’t been privy to, and here they were. Doriah had volunteered for the op because he had to do _something_. Hera was out there somewhere – Hera and Ojeda and the others, but Hera was the one who had finally shown up again after ten years. Shown up and then been lost.

Doriah dug his nails into his gloved palms, pressing his forehead against his fists. He knew that his aunt and uncle hadn’t been telling him the whole story, but he also knew them both well enough to recognize that that, at least, had been the complete truth. If Xiaan hadn’t been there he might have pressed, but she had already been upset and getting more so by the minute. Doriah refused to do that to her.

Which left him here now, going off to poke the gundark’s nest and see what crawled out. All Doriah wanted to do was hit something, but that wouldn’t help him get Hera back.

Every day in the hands of the Empire was one day too many as far as he was concerned, and it had already been ten years.

 _Poke the gundark’s nest and maybe while the bucketheads are distracted you can get to a secure terminal._ He wasn’t Xiaan, but he knew his way around a computer, and maybe there was something, _somewhere_ –

An alert sounded from the front of the ship and he straightened up so fast he felt briefly dizzy. So did everyone else, Kaylani pulling her headphones off and Numa dropping her datapad into her lap, Zabo passing a hand over his eyes. Fulcrum’s astromech chirped a warning that Doriah automatically translated even before Fulcrum herself said, “We’re about to leave hyperspace. This could get interesting very quickly.”

“This bird doesn’t have any weapons,” Kaylani pointed out. “What if that’s exactly what happens?”

“We’ll burn that bridge when we come to it,” Doriah said.

“Qutee’s got a few moves that will work even in a bucket like this,” Fulcrum said, turning to look back at the rest of them.

Kaylani looked like she was going to protest further, then subsided abruptly, winding her headphone cord around her datapad as she sat back.

The shuttle came out of hyperspace with barely a jolt. Doriah glanced out the window next to him, feeling his lekku twitch in surprise at the number of star destroyers in orbit – most worlds in the Outer Rim didn’t even rate one, let alone three. His datapad, which was set to download any Imperial transmissions along the standard frequencies, pinged. He pulled it out of his pocket, swiping his thumb over the screen to wake it up.

“The local Imps are looking for someone,” he said. “A Rodian – not you, Kay. Someone named Tseebo.”

Kaylani twitched a pointed ear in a gesture that Doriah knew meant amusement. There weren’t a whole lot of non-Twi’leks in the fleet, but there were a few, especially from the non-Twi’lek communities that had been living on Ryloth when Free Ryloth had left.

“I’ve got it too,” Fulcrum said, eyeing her own datapad. “I guess this is going to be a snatch and grab.”

“What do we care about some Rodian?” Zabo asked, yawning into his hand.

“Because, you idiot, if the Empire wants him either he’s done something that could be useful to our cause, or he hasn’t done anything and it would be cruel to leave him there,” Doriah snapped. “And we’re not that kind of people.”

Zabo raised his hands. “Forgive me, Syndulla,” he said, his tone on the honorific so sarcastic that even the usually laconic Edeleh raised an eyebrow, his lekku twitching.

Doriah bit his tongue on his automatic response and turned away. He could have done without Zabo’s presence here, but the other Twi’lek had volunteered, and Doriah wasn’t going to take advantage of his position to turn him away just because he didn’t like the guy. Being Cham Syndulla’s nephew didn’t get him _that_ far, even on the _Forlorn Hope_. Especially on the _Forlorn Hope_ ; he’d found that on other ships in the fleet the Syndulla name got him a certain amount of respect that just didn’t happen on the _Hope_ , where everyone knew exactly who he was and what his relationship to Cham was. He came from the wrong side of the family for that; Cham had adopted him into the curial caste as a legal formality, but Doriah hadn’t been born there, and no Rylothean Twi’lek would ever forget it.

“We’re going to find this Tseebo because it’s the right thing to do,” Fulcrum said. If she had noticed the exchange between Zabo and Doriah, she didn’t show it.

“And the bang?” Numa asked.

“That will go as planned.” Fulcrum put an arm across the back of her chair and turned to look at Doriah. “You’ve got it covered?”

He patted the bag resting on the seat next to him, feeling the light rounds of the bombs beneath his palm. “Yeah, I’ve got it.”

“Good.”

The shuttle slid past the star destroyers without trouble, their transponder code apparently not raising any alarms. A few minutes later they touched down in the Capital City spaceport, the hatch and ramp unfolding as QT-KT shut down the ship’s engines.

Fulcrum flipped the hood of her poncho up over her face and took a moment to adjust it so that the tips of her montrals poked up through the holes made for them. “Qutee, stay with the ship,” she said, and the droid made a depressed sound. “We may need to make a quick exit. The rest of you, come with me.”

The five of them – four Twi’leks and Kaylani – dutifully tromped out of the shuttle after her. Doriah glanced around, breathing in the grassy smell of the air. Lothal was a backwater; he couldn’t imagine what the Empire wanted here, but he knew that Xiaan’s calculations were never wrong, and this was where she had said the convoy had come from.

“Now what?” Edeleh said.

“Now,” Fulcrum said, “we poke the gundark’s nest and see what crawls out.”

*

“You know, if Minister Tua had called us in twenty-four hours ago, we’d probably have this guy in hand by now,” Sabine said, looking around the crowded street. “Then all we would have to do is sit back and enjoy the show.”

The entire Imperial presence on Lothal had been tearing apart the planet looking for the missing technician, but so far he had managed to elude them. Either he had gone to ground somewhere really good – and it had to be somewhere that was blocking the signals from his implant, unless he had managed to turn it off somehow – or he had gotten offworld before the blockade had been alerted. Sabine knew which one she suspected. The latter meant that it probably hadn’t been a spur of the moment whim and Tseebo had had outside help. The former, well…it _could_ be blind luck, but Sabine didn’t really believe in luck.

“Yeah, well, can’t blame the locals for not wanting to tell an Inquisitor they screwed up,” Zeb said, crossing his arms over his chest. He was leaning back in the shadow of a doorway, where most eyes would skate right over him – not exactly an easy feat for almost seven feet of big, purple, and last of his kind, but Zeb somehow managed it. “They were probably hoping to catch the guy before they triggered the trademarked Agent Syndulla tongue-lashing.”

“Huh,” Sabine said dismissively, but she had been on the wrong side of that more than once, and she guessed she couldn’t blame Tua for wanting to avoid setting off either Hera or Kanan. The woman had struck her as kind of a mouse. “You really think that after all that the guy’s just going to show up at the parade?”

Zeb shrugged. “I heard that those implants mess with people’s heads,” he said, twirling a finger towards one of his tall, pointed ears. “Who knows what someone with one of them is going to do? It’s for sure there’s probably not a whole lot of _him_ left.” He shuddered, his fur rippling with the motion. “Me, I’d rather take a short walk out of a long airlock before signing up for one of those things.”

“Yeah, me too.” Mirroring his posture, Sabine leaned back against the wall and folded her arms over her chest, her gauntlets digging a little painfully into the bare skin of her unarmored upper arms. It was just warm enough on Lothal – spring, she thought – to make going bare-armed bearable, but if they were here much longer she might have to switch to her cool weather gear. “I mean, I’ve read about the implants, and they’re pretty cool in theory – they can do some really awesome things – but to stick one of those in my brain? No thanks.” She shook her head to emphasize that, but even thinking about it made her shudder. The academy commandant back on Mandalore had had an assistant with one of them and it had been horrifying to watch; even droids had more life in them. All the cadets had avoided the Zombie, as they had called her. She was probably still there, wandering ghost-like around the halls of the Imperial Complex.

She and Zeb stood in silence for a few minutes, watching the streets start to fill as civilians started to gather for the upcoming parade. The bulk of the planet’s Imperial forces were still searching for Tseebo, but Empire Day waited for no one, and the planetary government wasn’t willing to sacrifice their celebration just because one tech had gotten bored and wandered off. Hera had decided to pull them off the search in favor of putting them on security detail at the parade; Empire Day celebrations were a common target for insurgents no matter what the world. Having their team scattered amongst the crowd – even with Kanan and Hera both in uniform – would cut down on the number of stormtroopers needed to patrol this kind of large gathering, freeing them up to continue the search. Or march in the parade, whatever. Sabine found Imperial parades almost uniformly boring, but she had come prepared to liven this one up a little, as long as none of the local insurgents – mostly farmers who had been pushed off their lands by the Empire – decided to do something first.

Her comlink pinged, and Sabine reached down to take it off her belt. “Spectre Five here.”

 _“This is Spectre Two,”_ Hera said. _“Anything on your end?”_

“Not unless you count one of the ugliest hats I’ve ever seen in my entire life,” Zeb said, leaning down as Sabine held her comlink up for him. “It’s pretty spectacular. I almost want to go ask the guy what he was thinking when he bought it.”

He pointed out the hat in question for Sabine as she glanced around, then grimaced. “Yeah, it’s pretty awful,” she agreed.

 _“I’ll take that as a no,”_ Hera said.

“What about yours?” Sabine asked, pushing herself up on the balls of her feet to look around. Zeb didn’t need the extra height, but Sabine – while not small for a woman – was a good foot shorter than him, and couldn’t quite see over the heads of the crowd around her. She caught a flash of green lekku that had to be Hera’s, since she hadn’t seen any other Twi’leks roaming around Capital City; they might be the most common species in the galaxy outside humans, but apparently even they had taken one look at Lothal and turned the starship around.

 _“Nothing here, either,”_ Hera said. If Kanan was with her, he didn’t bother weighing in.

Sabine came back down onto flat feet and covered a yawn with her hand; she had still been asleep twelve hours ago when Hera and Kanan had woken her up to tell her that the locals had lost a tech. Personally, Sabine didn’t blame the guy for wandering off; she had seen a couple of data analysis centers both on Mandalore and in her time on the _Ghost_ , and they weren’t exactly the most fun place to work. Not to mention whatever the implants did to someone’s head; Sabine still thought that it wasn’t completely out of the question that something had gotten scrambled and Tseebo really _had_ just wandered off, even if it was more likely that there was something more sinister at play.

Sabine glanced around again at the crowd of bored civilians waiting for the parade to start. She had lost track of Hera and going up on her toes again didn’t help; she didn’t bother looking for Kanan. For such a big guy, he wasn’t particularly easy to keep track of, since even in his blacks he had a habit of fading unnoticeably into the background. There were times when that was very useful, and Sabine had seen it scare the hell out of people during interrogations, when someone got a little too complacent about being questioned by a Twi’lek and somehow forgot about the Inquisitor in the room. She swore Kanan had given one Besalisk male a heart attack.

“Boring,” she said to Zeb.

“Huh?”

“The parade. I bet it’s going to be boring.”

He shrugged. “These Imperial things always are.”

“You never saw the Empire Day celebrations on Mandalore,” Sabine said. They had been grand displays of martial splendor, a bastardization playing on the traditions of the planet’s past. Sabine had been impressed by them when she had been little, but that had been a long time ago now.

She tugged one glove off to scratch at her neck beneath her helmet, then glanced up at Zeb. “Want to help me give them some spectacle?”

He frowned down at her. “What are you up to?”

“Nothing _bad_ ,” Sabine said, drawing out the third syllable. “We need to properly celebrate our glorious Empire, don’t we?”

Zeb’s ears twitched, the corners of his mouth turning up. “Hera going to be mad about this spectacle of yours?”

“Nah,” Sabine said, and grinned, though she knew he couldn’t see it beneath her helmet. “It’ll be fun.”

*

When Cham went looking for her, he eventually found Xiaan on the _Razor’s Edge_ , helping Sinthya and Teah with a navicomputer that had taken damage during the convoy ambush. Some of its systems had been burnt out during the energy burst – the _Edge_ had been the last ship besides the _Syndulla’s Gamble_ and the _Aegis_ to jump away – and had to be replaced. Cham knew that Xiaan preferred pure mathematics to engineering, but she was always willing to help out with the latter.

She was under the dashboard along with Teah while Sinthya did something arcane with the computer when Cham walked into the _Edge_ ’s cockpit, just her legs and a strip of pink stomach where her shirt had ridden up visible from beneath the dash. Sinthya glanced up as he came in. “Did something happen?”

“I just need to borrow Xiaan for a few minutes.”

Xiaan squirmed out from under the dashboard, pushing her goggles back from her face as she sat up. “Is it Doriah?” she said immediately, then repeated Sinthya’s earlier question. “Did something happen?”

“They’re not back yet,” Cham said, watching her shoulders slump. “I’m sure he’s all right.”

Xiaan made a small, helpless gesture with one hand, playing with the too-long sleeves of her workshirt as Teah came out from under the dashboard too. The Pantoran woman sat up and shoved her braid back over her shoulder. “What’s up?”

“Family business,” Cham said. “Xiaan?”

She followed him out of the cockpit, pushing up the sleeves of her too-big workshirt to reveal narrow wrists marked by the same twisting white tattoos on her lekku, the elaborate decorations that marked her as a high caste Twi’lek female. When she had gone to Zardossa Stix eleven years ago only her lekku had been marked, as was normally done for curial girls between the ages of four and five. She had gotten the rest of her caste tattoos after she and Doriah had come back – the ones on her shoulders a few months after her return, the rest at the usual intervals.

Since the _Razor’s Edge_ was docked on the _Forlorn Hope_ , most of the ship’s crew was elsewhere, leaving the lounge empty. Cham led Xiaan into it and closed the door behind them, motioning for her to sit down on one of the room’s slightly battered couches. She did so, looking up at him with wide blue eyes.

“Is something wrong?” she asked. She had gone completely still, her hands folded in her lap and her shoulders drawn in as though trying to make herself as small as possible.

Cham sat down next to her, turning towards her, careful to keep his hands where she could see them. Xiaan didn’t show it as much as Doriah did – or as much as Isval had, all those years ago – but she had some of the same physical cues, all those unseen scars of her enslavement. “Before I start,” he said, “I want you to know that you can say anything. If you refuse, I won’t ask why. Do you understand?”

Xiaan’s eyes went even wider, but she nodded, the tips of her lekku trembling with the short, tight motion.

“All right,” Cham said, fighting back the urge to tell her not to think about and go and tell Secchun to go to hell instead. “Secchun Fenn made an offer for you, for her son Nawara.”

Xiaan blinked, confusion washing over her face. “I don’t understand, Uncle.”

Cham sighed, not particularly looking forward to explaining it further, then said carefully, “Secchun Fenn has asked me if I would be amenable to arranging a marriage between you and her son Nawara. He’s about your age.”

Xiaan flinched back from him, pressing her fisted hands to her mouth. She shook her head mutely.

“All right,” Cham said again, quickly. “It’s all right, Xiaan, I won’t –”

“I can’t, Uncle,” she said, her voice muffled from behind her hands. “I c-can’t. Not for – not even for the clan, Uncle, I _can’t_ –”

“Xiaan –” He leaned forward and caught her shoulder in his good hand. She flinched again; she was shaking so badly that Cham could feel it vibrating up his whole arm. Her eyes were already brimming with tears when she looked up at him. “No one is going to make you,” he said. “I promise. I had to ask.”

Xiaan shook her head fiercely. After a moment she moved her still-clenched fists away from her mouth and said in a voice that was breathy with gasping, as if every syllable was being forced out, “I’m not leaving my family. I can’t. I won’t. The last time – the last time –”

She caught her breath, tears starting to spill down her cheeks, and Cham said, “Xiaan, you don’t have to explain –”

She shook her head again. “I’m not leaving – I’m not leaving my family, I can’t, I won’t, not after – not – whatever they want, a husband and a baby, whatever – I don’t, I don’t want it, I can’t – I won’t –” She stumbled upright, pulling free of Cham’s hand, and added in a strangled voice, “I’m sorry, Uncle,” and fled the lounge before he could answer.

*

“I hate Empire Day.”

“Maybe you should repeat that a little louder, dear,” Hera said. “I’m not sure those stormtroopers over there heard you.”

Kanan made a face at her that was at odds with the hard lines of his Inquisitor’s blacks and Hera grinned back, amused. She already knew that Kanan hated Empire Day with what was normally understated vitriol, rather than simply ignoring it the way that most denizens of the Outer Rim did. Hera herself had never taken notice of the occasion until she had been at the Imperial Academy, where it had meant long hours spent on uncomfortable chairs listening to various officers talk about the glory of the Empire, speeches that had all started to blur together after the third one. She had spent her first Empire Day out of the Academy dragging Kanan out of a barfight that he might or might not have started – six years later she was still uncertain of the details, since the only thing she remembered distinctly was glassing another Twi’lek woman in the chaos. She and Kanan hadn’t been sleeping together yet; Hera had been extremely tempted to just leave him on whatever backwater world that had been.

“I don’t like the spectacle,” Kanan said, lowering his voice slightly and dropping back into his own softer Rim accent. They were behind the security barricade, separated from the crowd of parade-goers, and the nearest stormtroopers were several meters away. No one wanted to get too close to Kanan. “It’s all just lies and terror.” He glanced at the crowd. “You really think any of those people actually want to be here?”

“I don’t think they have anything better to do,” Hera pointed out, frowning. “It’s just a parade, Kanan. It doesn’t mean anything.”

“Doesn’t it?”

It was only because she was still looking at him and saw his lips move that she heard what he said next. “If it didn’t mean anything they wouldn’t hold it.”

Hera bit her lip and laid a hand on his arm, angling her body to put herself between him and the rest of the world. “What’s with you?” she asked. “Is it just today? Another six hours and it’ll be a new day. A new beginning.”

The corners of his mouth turned up a little. “Maybe the locals will have even found their missing tech by then.” He glanced up, looking over her head, and Hera turned to see Minister Tua approaching, flanked by Commandant Aresko and a TIE pilot with his helmet tucked under his arm. The latter looked askance at her; Hera eyed him back, unimpressed by what she saw.

“Minister, Commandant,” she said, letting go of Kanan and clasping her hands behind her back. “Any luck?”

Tua’s mouth tightened into a thin line, and she turned towards the commandant. Hera and Kanan both looked at him and Aresko actually leaned back a little in the face of Kanan’s sudden attention. “I’m afraid our search hasn’t turned up anything yet,” he managed to say, visibly bracing himself before speaking. “Although we’ve shut down the spaceports and are screening all outgoing ships, it seems increasingly likely that this Tseebo may have had offworld help.”

“Hmm,” Kanan said, drawing out the syllable.

Hera felt her mouth twist. If Tseebo had gotten offworld, that meant that he was out of local jurisdiction and officially someone else’s problem – probably hers, given that she and Kanan were the highest ranking Imperials in the system with inter-planetary jurisdiction. Especially since they were currently without an assignment. Well, at least it would get them off this backwater.

“Be very certain of that, Commandant,” Hera told Aresko. “I’ll be making a full report of this affair to my superiors.”

Aresko and Tua both blanched, while the TIE pilot just looked mildly confused, probably because he didn’t know what was going on.

“I assure you, Agent Syndulla, we’re expending every possible resource available at present,” Minister Tua said brightly.

“You could have canceled the parade,” Kanan pointed out. “Then you’d be expending every possible resource.”

“Oh, I couldn’t possibly!” Tua said. “Governor Pryce commissioned this parade especially for Empire Day. And of course –” She flapped a hand behind her, in the direction of the advanced TIE fighter that would be rolled out later. “We do have our duty to the Empire.”

“Oh yeah,” Kanan said, his voice dripping sarcasm. “Can’t forget that.”

*

“I don’t get it,” Numa said.

“Get what?”

Doriah had one hand hooked around the strap of the bag slung across his chest, wary of pickpockets moving through the crowd. He and Xiaan had spent months running from one backwater world to another after they had escaped from their owner on Taris; Lothal hadn’t been one of them, but the only big difference in these Imperial Rimworlds was climate. The last thing he wanted was some street rat taking off with a bag full of explosives.

“Why the Empire is _here_ ,” Numa said. She sidestepped a small Sullustan woman and came up again on Doriah’s right side, close enough that her shoulder brushed against his. “There’s nothing here.”

“You really think that the Empire needs there to be something?” Doriah said, moving a little away from her. He let his gaze flick idly across the crowd, picking out the Imperials. At least stormtroopers were easy to spot, and there were definitely plenty of them here, either as crowd control or in the vain hope that the missing Rodian would turn up. Probably the former; no matter how badly the implant had fried the guy’s brain, Doriah couldn’t see why he would wander towards the largest concentration of Imperial might on the planet.

“The Empire doesn’t need there to be something it wants,” Doriah went on as he and Numa made their slow way towards the end of the parade route. They needed to get the attention of the Imps and buy Fulcrum and the others enough time to locate the Rodian and get him back to the shuttle. Doriah could have done it on his own, but Numa had insisted on coming with him. “All it needs is space. They can fill that in easy.”

Though he had looked up the specs on Lothal once they had been told where they were going, which hadn’t been until they were actually in hyperspace. Lots of natural resources – though nothing particularly spectacular – and plenty of space, perfect for weapons factories and shipyards, so after they finished stripping the planet of every conceivable resources they could keep dancing on the corpse. Doriah had seen it before – up close and in person, unfortunately.

Numa shrugged. “I guess, but –” She stopped as Doriah put up a hand. “What is it?” she asked, her voice going low and her hand moving towards her blaster.

“I thought I saw –” _Hera_ , he nearly said, but it had just been a flash of green lekku near the Imperial barricade, and when Doriah looked again he couldn’t spot what he had thought he had seen. Besides, Hera couldn’t be here. Uncle Cham and Aunt Alecto had told him that last they had heard, she had been somewhere in the Inner Rim – parsecs and parsecs away from Lothal. “Never mind.”

He didn’t even know if he would recognize Hera if he did see her. It had been ten years, and the last clear memory Doriah had of his cousin was of her limp on the ground in the Zardossa Stix colony forum after that ISB agent had stunned her. Then one of the stormtroopers had slammed the butt of his rifle across Doriah’s face and everything had gone black; after that…

That hadn’t just been the last time he had seen Hera. That had been the last time he had seen a lot of people.

“Hey.” Numa laid a hand on his arm, and Doriah blinked and looked down at her. “Are you all right?”

He shrugged her hand off. “Yeah, I’m fine. I thought I saw someone I…I used to know.”

Numa frowned, but before she could press the matter Doriah started moving through the crowd again. They needed to get as close to the barricade as possible before the parade got started, and then the show could _really_ begin.

*

Usually Ezra didn’t actually bother to watch the parade, but this time he found himself lingering even after he had finished working the crowd. He knew that there were other pickpockets out there too, members of Capital City’s thriving criminal underworld; he had seen a few of them, including the two that had already been arrested by the stormtroopers on the security detail, but there had to be others he wasn’t spotting. Most of them were ganged up; one of the reasons Ezra had left Capital City for the comm tower was because he hadn’t been willing to go one way or another, preferring to make his own way rather than commit to a gang. It would have made a lot of things easier, but he didn’t want that. He didn’t want to be a part of something; he would rather be out on his own, where the only person he had to worry about was himself. It was just better that way.

He hauled himself up over the wall of the building he had chosen and dropped lightly down onto the roof, breathing hard for a few seconds before hurrying to the side that overlooked the parade route. The Empire Day parade was pretty much the same every year, so it wasn’t as though there was really anything interesting to see; this year there weren’t even any TIEs doing flybys. Besides, Ezra saw stormtroopers, troop transports, and walkers every couple of days; he didn’t need a parade for _that_ , not unless he wanted to see them all together. Which didn’t really make them any different than they usually were, just shined up a little.

Ezra shrugged his backpack off and leaned it against the parapet, then pushed himself up on his knees so that he could rest his arms on top of it and look out over the street. By now the parade had finally made its way to its ending point; Ezra could see Minister Tua and a couple of other Imperials standing on a hover-platform behind the security barricade, near the front of the Imperial Complex. Hands flat on top of the parapet, Ezra boosted himself up a little more, scanning the crowd for anything interesting. There were a couple of Twi’leks near the security barricade, a green-skinned male and a bluish-green female, and another green-skinned female _behind_ the barricade, standing beside a dark-clad human man; Ezra could count the number of Twi’leks he had seen before on Lothal on the fingers of one hand, so that got points for novelty, at least. The Mandalorian girl and the purple alien he had seen coming out of the Imperial Complex that time were there too, standing in the shadow of a building on the opposite side of the street, out of the press of the crowd.

Ezra started to lean back, then paused, the back of his neck prickling. It was that sound again, the sound that wasn’t a sound, the one he could feel right down to his bones. He turned his head, looking back at the security barricade, at the Twi’lek woman behind it – no, not at her, at the man with her, the human. Almost at the same time the man turned suddenly, tilting his head back and looking straight at Ezra.

Ezra gasped and ducked down below the parapet. The sound was gone, but he could feel adrenaline running through him, his breath coming in quick, harsh gasps. That had been – that had been – 

Ezra had no idea what that had been, but he did know that it had scared the blazes out of him.

After a few moments he put his fingers on the edge of the parapet and pushed himself slowly up. The man wasn’t looking at him anymore, turned towards the Twi’lek to say something to her. Even looking at him made the back of Ezra’s skull itch, but he couldn’t tell _why_. He wasn’t in uniform, either – well, not an officer’s grays, at least. He was wearing black leathers that didn’t look like any Imperial uniform Ezra had ever seen, along with black armor on his right shoulder and arm. It had the Imperial symbol painted on it, which at least explained what he was doing behind the barricade.

“That was weird,” Ezra muttered. “I –”

He had felt something. A connection.

Leaning cautiously out over the parapet, he peered down at the guy, trying to figure out what was making his skin prickle. He had to be some kind of Imperial, but that didn’t really narrow it down or explain why Ezra wasn’t running for his life right now. Anyway, Ezra had a strict policy of staying away from Imperials, especially the ones he didn’t already know he could jerk around.

“Who is this guy?” he said out loud, then leaned back as an AT-DP walker came marching past to the sounds of half-hearted applause. Stupid parade. Ezra really hated Empire Day.

*

“Pretty, isn’t it?” Kanan said to Hera as the new advanced TIE fighter was rolled out, his voice covered by the polite applause of the crowd in response to Tua’s effusive announcements. Any minute now the woman would probably offer to start kissing babies. “I bet that moon jockey they got to take it for a ride doesn’t have a scratch on you.”

“I’m pretty sure I could take him in a fistfight, never mind in the air,” Hera said, smiling at him. “Minister Tua said I could borrow one later, if we’re still around.”

“Yeah? I guess she does have some sense after all.”

“Be nice, dear,” Hera said, apparently in a good mood. It was probably proximity to the advanced TIE, rather than the Empire Day festivities. “She’s not so bad.”

“Yeah, well, if she had called us when that tech first went missing –” Kanan stopped abruptly, feeling the Force hum warm down the back of his neck.

Hera was saying something, but Kanan didn’t have the faintest idea what it was. He looked around, his gaze skating over the crowd before slanting upwards towards the rooftop of one of the buildings lining the street.

_There._

He couldn’t see anything, but every instinct he had said that there was someone up there. Kanan took a step in that direction, heedless of everything going on around him, then a hand closed on his elbow.

He spun, his hand falling to his lightsaber before he recognized Hera. Her eyes went wide, but she didn’t let go of him, and Kanan felt his shoulders slump. “Sorry.”

“What is it?” Hera asked him. “Did you see something?”

“I –” Kanan looked around again. “I sensed –”

Hera was reaching for her comlink. “I’ll get Zeb and Sabine to –”

“No!”

When she blinked, Kanan ran a hand over his face and said again, more softly, “No. It’s not – it’s something else.”

“What?” Her expression was concerned, her hand still on his arm. It was a familiar, grounding presence, and Kanan forced himself to concentrate on that, on what was real and not whatever the Force was trying to tell him.

Kanan hesitated, then looked up again at the apparently empty rooftops. “I don’t know.”

*

“Boring,” Sabine sing-songed, which made Zeb look at her in amusement.

“Yeah, Sabine, tell us how you really feel,” he said.

She grinned at him even though she knew he couldn’t see it behind her helmet, already reaching for one of the pouches on her belt. “Want to help give the locals a _real_ show?”

Zeb’s brow ridges arched, but he caught the detonator Sabine flipped at him in one massive hand, then stared down at it in some concern. There was a red light blinking on it. “Uh…”

“When I say ‘now’, throw it as high as you can,” Sabine told him. She glanced up at the big projection screen in front of the barricade, where Minister Tua was going on about the glory of the Empire and Lothal’s importance therein. Sabine hadn’t left Mandalore until she had joined up with the _Ghost_ , but even she knew that one world like this – manufacturing facilities or not – wouldn’t make that much difference in the grand scheme of the Empire, so Tua was deluding herself if she thought Lothal had anything going for it that a thousand other worlds in the galaxy couldn’t offer.

“Okay, now?” Zeb said as the detonator began to blink more rapidly. “Now? _Now_?”

“Now,” Sabine said, pointing at the thing, and Zeb pulled his arm back, bouncing forward onto the balls of his feet and grunting as he flung the detonator into the air. It exploded into a brilliant display of color, fireworks spraying out in every direction – just like Sabine had planned. There was a burst of applause from the parade crowd and she barely resisted the urge to dance a little in delight. Instead, she pulled a second detonator out of her pouch and said, “Another?”

“Don’t mind if I do,” Zeb said, taking it from her. He flung it up and it exploded just as the last sparks from the first detonator were fading, briefly lighting up the night sky.

Sabine grinned up at it, blinking back the dazzle from her eyes. Sure, Hera was probably going to yell at her later since she hadn’t exactly had permission for the firework show, but who cared. Lothal was one of the more boring worlds Sabine had visited since leaving Mandalore behind; a little festive entertainment was good for the locals. Besides, it wasn’t like it was going to hurt anyone. It was just art. Whoever heard of art hurting anyone?

*

Even the bucketheads standing guard on the security barricade were looking up at the fireworks display, so Doriah slipped past it without anyone seeing him. He slapped detonators onto the parked troop transports as he ran quickly past them, crouching down to fix another detonator onto the platform the advanced TIE fighter was resting on. Once it was secure, Doriah dashed back towards the barricade, flattening himself against the side of a transport as two stormtroopers looked around, their attention attracted by the flash of movement.

He backed around the corner of the thing towards the parade crowd, still looking back and wary of the two stormtroopers, when someone said suddenly, “You there!”

Doriah whirled so quickly his own lekku nearly slapped him in the face, automatically reaching for his blaster before he stopped himself. The stormtrooper who had spoken fixed his blaster rifle on Doriah, adding suspiciously, “This area’s off-limits!”

Thinking fast, Doriah pointed up towards the still brilliant fireworks display and said, “Did you see it? It’s so beautiful! All the colors, it’s like a – like a rainbow –”

The stormtrooper didn’t look convinced, going by the fact that he dropped into a stance more suited for blowing Doriah’s head off than directing him back behind towards the crowd. Doriah was reaching for one of his blasters when Numa ran past the stormtrooper and flung her arms around his neck, pressing her lips to his before saying in a simpering voice, “Sweetie, what are you doing?”

She turned back towards the stormtrooper, still hanging onto Doriah, and said, “Sorry, my husband’s just so patriotic, you know.”

“Empire Day!” Doriah said, pumping a fist into the air and resisting the urge to roll his eyes so hard they fell out of his head. “I love it! All hail our glorious Emperor!”

The stormtrooper looked taken aback, but he lowered his blaster and said, “Uh – okay. Move along.”

Numa kissed Doriah again, though he turned his head so that she only caught his cheek, then grabbed his hand and dragged him out from between the two transports, which were going to blow up in a few minutes anyway.

“Thanks,” Doriah said, pulling free of her hand. “You get the others planted?”

“Yeah.” She rubbed her hands together, then stopped and interlaced her fingers.

Doriah pulled his comlink off his belt. “Boomer to Fulcrum,” he said. “Charges are laid, we’re ready for –” He stopped, staring at the Imperial barricade.

 _“Boomer?”_ Fulcrum said, her voice a little distorted by the comlink. _“What’s wrong?”_

There was a Twi’lek behind the barricade. A Twi’lek woman, and Doriah had been wrong earlier; it might have been ten years, but he would know his cousin anywhere. She was standing a little off to the side of the hover-platform, next to a tall human man, where Doriah couldn’t have seen her from where he had been earlier. And it was Hera. It had to be Hera; Doriah hadn’t seen her in a decade but he would know her anywhere.

And the bombs – the bombs Doriah had set – would go off in less than a minute.

“Doriah?” Numa said. “What is it?”

He shoved the comlink at her. “Stay here!”

“Doriah!” Numa yelled after him, but he didn’t look back, shoving his way through the crowd, heedless of the shouts of protest.

“Hera!” he shouted. “Get away from –”

He thought she looked up at the sound of her name, her head turning towards him. Doriah didn’t have a chance to finish the sentence because every bomb that he and Numa had set exploded at once.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, thanks to my lovely beta Xena.
> 
> For those who might be interested, I wrote the story of Cham and Alecto's first meeting [here on Tumblr](http://bedlamsbard.tumblr.com/post/133337979723/cham-and-alectos-first-meeting-for-xenadd-who).
> 
> I do daily progress reports over on Tumblr, under the tag "[daily fic snippet](http://bedlamsbard.tumblr.com/tagged/daily-fic-snippet)," if you want to keep track of what I'm working on or get a hint of what's happening in the next chapter or two.


	9. Pivot

“Hera!”

At the sound of her name Hera looked automatically in the direction it had come from, out into the crowd lining the parade route. There was some kind of disturbance there, and she started to reach for her blaster, reaching for a distracted Kanan’s arm to get his attention.

“Hera!” There was a flash of green in the crowd, something about the movement setting Hera’s nerves on edge. “Get away from –”

Kanan moved faster than Hera had thought possible, grabbing her by the waist and flinging her to the ground, throwing his body down over hers as the world exploded around them. She felt the heat of the blast wash over them, her ears ringing and her forehead knocking down against the pavement, Kanan’s breath against her ear and his grip like durasteel around her. There was another blast, her mind automatically filling in _secondary explosion – the fuel tanks on the TIEs or the transports_ , and Hera pressed her forehead down against the pavement and squeezed her eyes shut, feeling gravel dig into her skin. Another secondary explosion shook the ground beneath them, the air hot with the distinctive odor of rhydonium.

_Blast, that was the advanced TIE –_

It felt like an eternity before Kanan eased off her, then straightened up and pulled her to her feet. Hera rubbed her hands over her ear-cones to try and clear the ringing away, staring around at the chaos and trying to make sense of it.

Where the parade vehicles had been parked there was only wreckage. Part of the chassis of the advanced TIE was lying a little ways away, burning brightly; as Hera looked around an AT-DP walker collapsed as one of its damaged legs went out from under it. Stormtroopers scattered in front of it, running as fast as they could, before Kanan suddenly thrust out his hands.

The walker froze in mid-air. Hera looked at Kanan, seeing his face set in a rictus of concentration before he made a shoving motion with both hands. The walker went teetering backwards, seeming to hesitate for an instant before collapsing harmlessly in a pile.

All Hera could smell was smoke and burning metal, but her hearing was returning in bursts of sound that went in and out like a bad wireless frequency. Screaming – an Imperial officer ordering stormtroopers to contain the crowd – someone screaming in sheer agony, yelling for their mother, begging for help –

Hera froze, her own breath clawing in her throat. For a moment she wasn’t certain where she was, what planet she was on; she couldn’t tell whether or not there was blood running down her face or what was happening, the sounds around a babble of Basic, Twi’leki, and Rodian. She couldn’t – she couldn’t –

Another fuel canister exploded and Hera flinched, throwing her arms up to cover her eyes, but not fast enough to prevent everything going white. She tried to blink the sparks away, but everything was a blur, and she didn’t know where she was, she was back in the house in the colony, she was – she was –

“Hera!”

Hands caught at her shoulders and Hera flinched back, then looked up to see Kanan staring down at her. “Are you all right?” he asked her. “Are you hurt?”

“I –” She looked around again. Lothal. They were on Lothal, not Zardossa Stix, and she was an Imperial officer, not a little girl. “I’m fine. Where’s the minister?”

Kanan swore under his breath and turned. Hera scanned the wreckage behind the security barrier, trying to ignore the way that her mind kept turning the burning hulks of troop transports, AT-DPs, and TIEs into burning buildings, stormtroopers here blurring into stormtroopers then.

She spotted Minister Tua crumpled on the ground near the overturned hover-platform, along with Commandant Aresko and the TIE pilot who had been with them, the latter of whom was pushing himself upright. A stormtrooper was kneeling by Minister Tua, trying to check for a pulse.

Hera drew her blaster and ran over to them, Kanan just behind her. The stormtrooper jerked his blaster up reflexively, then saw her uniform and said, “Ma’am –”

Tua and Aresko were both coming groggily around. Hera ignored the commandant and said, “Minister, are you all right? How many fingers am I holding up?”

“These rebels have ruined Empire Day!” Tua wailed. She had lost her hat somewhere and her fine blonde hair was coming loose of its knot, falling around her face in wispy waves.

“She’s fine,” Kanan said. “You –” He pointed at the stormtrooper and the pilot. “Get the minister and the commandant inside the Imperial Complex, do it now.”

“They must be punished!” Tua spat as the stormtrooper helped her to her feet. “Inquisitor, I demand –”

“We’ll handle it,” Hera assured her. “For now, Minister, my priority is to make certain you’re safe. You too, Commandant.”

“Yes – yes, of course,” said Commandant Aresko, touching his fingertips to the blood on his face and staring at it, apparently in shock.

Hera waved over a few more stormtroopers and gave them the same orders. Tua was still protesting as she and Aresko were hustled off, protectively located in the center of a knot of armored and heavily armed men.

That was one concern off Hera’s chest. She reached for her comlink, which had been beeping frantically at her for the past few minutes, Sabine saying in a strained voice, _“Spectre One, Spectre Two, come in. Hera, Kanan, please come in –”_

“We’re here,” Hera said. “We’re all right. What’s your twenty?”

_“Spectre Four and I are on the west side of the street, out of the blast radius, but we’ve got –”_

Kanan had been listening over Hera’s shoulder, but she saw his head suddenly snap up as though he had heard something she hadn’t. “Kanan?” she said. “What is it?”

“I sense –” He looked around, his gaze moving upwards again, to the rooftops overlooking the street. Hera told Sabine to wait for a moment and followed his line of sight, resting her free hand on her holstered blaster and remembering his early unease.

Then she saw it.

There was a boy standing on the roof of one of the buildings, staring down at the chaos. He didn’t have a weapon, or at least not that Hera could see. As though sensing the attention on him, he turned his head in their direction –

And Kanan moved.

Hera shouted after him, but he was already flinging himself up, bouncing off the roof of one of the burning troop transports and catching hold of a spar protruding from a building, momentum carrying him in a full circle around it before he let go and landed on the nearest rooftop in a roll. He was on his feet a second later, not a single motion wasted as he pelted across the rooftops towards the boy. The boy saw him coming – an Inquisitor in full blacks, with the Imperial symbol on his armor – and ran.

“Kanan!” Hera screamed, not caring that she wasn’t supposed to use his name in public, and ran after him, wondering what in blazes he was up to this time. She raised her comlink as she ran, saying breathlessly, “Spectre Five, this is Spectre Two, Spectre One and I are in pursuit –”

Someone grabbed her by the arm.

Hera dropped her comlink and came around swinging. The person who had grabbed her caught her wrist in his free hand and Hera froze, staring at him. He was a green-skinned Twi’lek male her own age, with the sharp features that were common in the Syndulla clan; Hera hadn’t seen him in ten years, but she _knew him_ –

“Doriah?”

*

Doriah didn’t know how long he was unconscious for, but it couldn’t have been more than a few seconds, because when he came back to himself there were still explosions going off, secondary explosions as the fuel tanks on the Imperial vehicles ruptured. He pushed himself up onto his elbows, then staggered to his feet, buffeted by the crowd of civilians fleeing the blast radius. He had factored in the possibility of secondary explosions when he had made the bombs, but this was far better than he had expected. The leisurely pace of the parade must have left more fuel in the tanks than he had calculated.

The entire mustering ground was a riot of flame, smoke, and twisted metal, secondary explosions still going off in spurts of bright color that differed based on the type of fuel. Doriah stared at it for a moment, managing to stand his ground despite the beings running past him, then saw a gray-clad figure with green lekku silhouetted against the burning wreckage and remembered why he had turned back.

Hera.

Doriah swore and drew one of his blasters, shouldering through the panicked crowd back towards the staging ground. There were stormtroopers advancing on them, their blasters raised, and Doriah edged back against the side of the nearest building, hoping that they wouldn’t notice the guy running towards the explosions instead of away from them.

“Hey!” someone said, and Doriah turned to see a stormtrooper aiming his blaster at him. “What’re you –”

Doriah jerked his blaster up and shot him in the face.

The stormtrooper went reeling backwards and Doriah pushed past him, keeping his blaster pointed at the ground as he ran towards the staging ground, flinching automatically as another fuel canister exploded. He could see Hera with an Imperial, a human male in a black uniform that Doriah didn’t recognize.

It was her. It was definitely her, Doriah could tell that even from back here, and seeing her now, after all these years, made his breath catch and his heart ache. He and Hera were only a few months apart in age, and when they had been kids they had looked enough alike that they would have been mistaken for siblings if not for Hera’s caste markings. They had spent their entire childhood running around first Ryloth and then Zardossa Stix together, sometimes with Hera’s cousin Ojeda in tow. And then – 

Doriah still had nightmares about Hera being dragged off.

But why was she _here_? He had known Imps who would show off their human mistresses at public events, even though it was generally frowned on, but it was almost unheard of for one of them to trot out a nonhuman concubine. Even Doriah’s old master had only done so in the privacy of his own home or starship.

He edged closer to the staging ground, his grip steady on his blaster. He saw the Imperial with Hera look up suddenly, then take off at a dead run, making Hera shout and chase after him. Doriah glanced around long enough to make sure that no stormtroopers were watching, then followed them. The Imp took to the rooftops like a Terrelian Jango Jumper, leaving Hera on the ground speaking into her comlink.

Doriah holstered his blaster and dashed towards her, grabbing at her arm. She spun on the balls of her feet, her free hand already coming around in what would have been a beautiful right hook if Doriah hadn’t caught her wrist.

Her green eyes went wide and startled. “Doriah?” she gasped, and he let out a breath he hadn’t even been aware he had been holding.

“Hera –”

She pulled free of his grip, then flung her arms around his neck. Doriah wrapped his arms around her, holding her close, heedless of the chaos around them or the likelihood that any of the Imperials might see them.

“It is you,” she breathed, pulling back enough to look at him. “What are you doing here? Do you live on Lothal? Are you all right? I can get a medic over here –”

Doriah reached for her hand, glancing around for an exit and spotting an alley that must previously have been blocked off. The blockade had been knocked over at some point, leaving the way was clear. He tugged her towards it and she went with him, confused but not protesting. “Hera, we have to go,” he said. “Right now, while the Imperials are distracted –”

“What are you talking about?” She reached for his face once they were in the shelter of the alley, a quiet moment of peace away from the chaos of the staging ground. “You’re bleeding –”

“I hit my head, I’m fine,” he said, but he didn’t pull away when Hera laid her gloved hand alongside his cheek, her black-clad fingers moving over the cross-hatch of scars on his forehead.

“Doriah, your face – who did this to you?”

That was the last thing Doriah wanted to get into right now. He caught at her hand and twined his fingers with hers, repeating, “Hera, we have to go, before anyone realizes –”

“Why? You’re not making any sense.” Her eyes were wide and concerned. There was a scrape on her cheekbone where she must have hit the pavement when the explosions began and her gray cap had dark marks on it, but otherwise she seemed unhurt. She looked better than she had the last time Doriah had seen her, at least.

“I’ve – we’ve got a ship here,” Doriah explained. “We can take you offworld, away from the Empire, back to the fleet. But we need to go now, Hera.”

For a moment Hera just looked confused, and then all at once realization dawned on her face. She drew back from him, pulling her hands free of his grip, and set her shoulders as her jaw hardened and her lekku went tight. “Did my parents send you?” she demanded. “Is that what happened? They tracked us here and they sent _you_ –”

“What?” Doriah said. “No! Uncle Cham didn’t –” He blinked. “Cham and Alecto said you were on Inner Rim, that you were with some Imperial…” He let the words trail off as he finally registered what she was wearing, his gaze dropping from her face to her gray uniform and the fleximetal cuirass she was wearing, the rank markers on her left breast. “Hera? What are you –”

Her cheeks colored slightly. “I’m an Imperial officer now,” she said. “I’m a field agent in the Imperial Security Bureau.”

“What?” Doriah repeated. “Hera, you can’t be serious –”

“Why would I lie about that?” Hera demanded, but before he could come up with a response added, “Doriah, what are you _doing here_? If my parents didn’t send you –” She blinked, apparently realizing what that signified. “You got back to Ryloth? After the colony –”

“The Curia exiled the entire Syndulla clan from Ryloth after Uncle Cham left, so no, I haven’t been back to Ryloth,” Doriah snapped. “The fleet had already been gone from Ryloth for three years when we – when they found us.”

Hera blinked once, a nervous flutter of her lashes. “Us – who – did the others –”

“Xiaan and I were the only ones who made it out,” Doriah said. He rubbed a hand over his face. Hera was watching him warily, her arms crossed across her chest, elbows tucked in close to her sides in an attempt to make herself smaller. It was the same thing Xiaan did when she was nervous, and Doriah made himself gentle his voice when he added, “Hera, you have to come with me. We can go back to the fleet, sort this out –”

She shook her head. “I’m an Imperial officer, Doriah. I’m glad to see you, that you’re all right, but I’m an officer, I swore an oath to the Emperor –”

“Why?” Doriah demanded. He took a step towards her, and she fell back reflexively, raising her gaze to his. She was shorter than he was now, though not by much. “Hera, after everything the Empire did, to us, to our family, to Ryloth –”

“It’s who I am!” Hera said, staring at him with desperate eyes. “It’s all I have!”

“No! You have us, you have your family –”

“My _family_?” she said fiercely. “Terrorists and murderers? Daddy – my fa – if it wasn’t for Cham, none of this ever would have happened to us. Why would I ever want to be a part of that?”

“How could you ever want to be a part of _this_?” Doriah snapped. He jabbed a finger back at the staging ground, where the hulks of troop transports and AT-DPs were still burning and stormtroopers were running past, someone screaming desperately for help as a background counterpart to the crackle of flames. “Of the Empire?”

“ _This_ isn’t the Empire,” Hera insisted, her hands clenching into fists. “This isn’t the Empire, this is what rebels like my father do because they can’t –” She stopped, staring at him, then said, “No. No, no, no –”

Doriah caught at her arms, holding her in place. “Hera, look at me –”

“No!” she snapped, her voice rising nearly to a scream. “Doriah, no, tell me you didn’t do this, Doriah, _tell me you didn’t do this_ –”

“Hera –”

“Why would you do this?” she shouted, and thumped a fist into his chest. “Doriah, why? This is what _he_ does, if it hadn’t been for him none of this would have happened, why would you –”

“It’s not Cham’s fault!” Doriah said, catching her wrist. “This is the Empire, Hera, if it wasn’t for the Empire we would be home and safe –”

“That’s not true!”

“Is that what they told you? Uncle Cham didn’t burn the colony, he didn’t sell our people into slavery, he didn’t –”

“No!” Hera screamed at him. “He brought this on us, on Ryloth, on our people! He made this happen!”

“The Empire did this to us!” Doriah said, his voice rising. He took a deep breath and tried to make his voice calmer, saying, “You’ll see when you come back with me to the fleet, come on, Hera, we have to _go_ –”

“I’m not going anywhere with you,” Hera whispered. Her face had gone ashen in the dim light; she tried to pull free of his grip but Doriah held on. “You did this, you’re a terrorist, just like him –”

“We’re fighting for _freedom_ , Hera, so what happened to us never happens to anyone else,” Doriah insisted. “We’re not terrorists. You have to know that the Empire is evil, you know what it does to people like us –”

She shook her head furiously, her mouth a thin line. “The Empire is order. The Empire is peace. The Empire is the only way –”

“The Empire destroyed our family, Hera!” Doriah snapped, barely resisting the urge to shake her. “It stole our world, it destroyed our family, they killed my mother, my _sister_ – do you remember her, Hera, do you remember Lika? They killed my sister in front of me because she wasn’t _useful_ , because she was just a baby. Why would you ever want to be a part of _that_?”

“We’re not like that,” Hera said urgently. “We don’t do that. That was – that was – we don’t do that! I don’t do that!”

“Do you have any idea what the Empire did to us?” Doriah snarled. “What they did to me, to _Xiaan_ – what the hell did they do to you to make you defend them?”

“They didn’t do anything to me!” Hera’s green eyes were huge, her lekku trembling with urgency. She reached up with both hands to touch him, as though trying to convince him of her sincerity. “I saw what happens when people defy the Empire. This is the galaxy we live in, Doriah, you can’t fight it. This is what we are.”

“No, it’s not!” Doriah dug his fingers into her arms, keeping her from moving. “We have to fight for what’s right, Hera. You used to understand that –”

“I do! What do you think I do for the ISB, Doriah? We’ve helped so many people –”

“By terrorizing them? By killing _their_ sisters, enslaving _their_ cousins?”

“No!” She tried to pull free again, her voice pitching up in something close to panic. “No! We keep that from having to happen! My team would never –”

“So what, you’re some Imp’s pet? He says ‘jump’ and you say ‘how high?’ and then tell yourself that you’re doing the right thing because _you’re_ not killing children, just their parents?”

“No!” Hera said. “We don’t do that, my team doesn’t do that! We help people!”

“How can you say that? How can you believe that after what the Empire did to us; don’t tell me that you’ve never met anyone else that the Empire has hurt, that you think you’re some kind of outlier –”

For a fleeting instant her gaze cut sideways, then she said, her voice trembling, “No, Doriah, it makes me stronger, it means I know what I’m fighting for, to make sure what happened to me, to Zeb, to Kanan – that it never happens to anyone else. We’re better because we _know_.”

“Hera, no, that’s not how it works –”

“It _is_!” Hera snapped. “This is the galaxy we live in now, Doriah! I understand that, even if my father never will. We live here _now_. That’s not going to change, and it’s foolish to believe that anything we do will ever make it so. We make _this_ galaxy better, we don’t try and build a new one, because that’s impossible.”

All Doriah could do was shake his head. “The Hera I knew would never say that,” he said. “Look, come with me, come back to the fleet, to your family –”

It was Hera’s turn to shake her head, her jaw set, her lekku shivering slightly. “I’m not going anywhere near them,” she said. “Not after what they did to Kanan on Thyferra.”

“Thyfer – Hera, have you _seen_ them?” Doriah demanded.

She hesitated for a long moment, then nodded slightly. “They shot my partner,” she said. “They tried to kill him.”

_If he’s an Imp, then he probably deserved it_ , Doriah thought, but he knew better than to say it out loud. He knew intimately in a way that Cham and Alecto never would that sometimes you had to do terrible things to survive, even if that meant deluding yourself. And sometimes it wasn’t even a delusion.

“You were on Thyferra?” he said instead. “At the same time as Uncle Cham and Aunt Alecto? You actually saw them?”

Hera looked a little confused by the sudden change of subject, biting her lip before she nodded again. “They thought that Kanan – my partner – had done something to me,” she allowed, her voice faintly grudging. “As if that’s the only reason I would ever sleep with him.”

Doriah couldn’t help his grimace, and Hera’s lip curled. “I’m not going back with you, Doriah. I know what I am. I’m not like my father.”

“I’m not leaving you here,” Doriah insisted. “This isn’t right, Hera. You’re not an Imperial.”

“I am a servant of the Empire,” Hera said simply. “I am an Imperial officer, Doriah, that is who and what I am. You have to accept that, because it’s never going to change. I sacrificed too much to be anything else.”

Doriah shook his head. “I don’t accept that.”

“You’re going to have to,” said a new voice.

Doriah and Hera both looked at the entrance to the alley, where a young woman in brightly painted Mandalorian armor was standing, a blaster in each hand. “Unless you want a couple of blaster bolts between your eyes,” she went on as a big Lasat stepped up behind her, “you’ll get away from her right now.”

*

Sabine had set off too many explosions to be particularly bothered by this one, except for the fact that –

“I didn’t do that!” she blurted out to Zeb, staring at the explosions blossoming from the staging ground, beautiful mushroom clouds of multicolored flame and smoke. A few of the fireworks were still going off overhead, adding an eerie quality to the display that was only slightly tempered by the sound of screaming.

The primaries had barely stopped when the secondaries started, a rising crescendo of sound and fury as fuel tanks overheated and blew. The Empire mostly used the same fuel for everything, but there were a couple of exotics like rhydonium in there, and the rainbow colored burst made Sabine glad that she had already set her helmet-cam to record before the fireworks had started.

“I’ve got to meet this guy,” she said, entranced. “This is a work of art. It’s not actually that easy to set off a chain of secondary explosions.”

“Where are your priorities?” Zeb snapped. “Hera and Kanan are in there!”

That snapped Sabine out of her fugue and she started to scramble for her comlink before she realized that Zeb already had his out, saying, “Spectre One, Spectre Two, come in –”

The only response was static.

Zeb and Sabine exchanged a horrified look, and then as one both turned towards the staging ground. From here all Sabine could see was flame and rising smoke; the groan of twisted metal was covered up by the sound of screaming from the civilians fleeing in every direction but towards it. As Sabine stared, an AT-DP started to crumple downwards as its damaged legs went out from under it. Before it could fall, however, it froze in mid-air, then against all laws of gravity went teetering backwards to collapse harmlessly in the opposite direction.

“That’s got to be Kanan,” Zeb said.

Sabine nodded agreement; going against the stereotype of every Inquisitor bogeyman story she had heard in the Academy, Kanan didn’t actually particularly like seeing people hurt when there was something he could do to help. He was the only Inquisitor she had ever met, so she didn’t know if he was an outlier among the Inquisition or not, but she did know that if there was someone on Lothal using the Force to keep AT-DPs from falling on innocent beings – or stormtroopers – then it had to be him.

“Come on,” she told Zeb. “We have to get over there.”

That was easier said than done. Everyone that had turned out for the parade seemed to be running in the opposite direction, understandably enough, forcing Zeb and Sabine to fight their way upstream. More than once one of them had to dart aside to pull someone who had fallen upright, Sabine relying on Zeb’s bulk to keep from being knocked over herself.

They weren’t even halfway there when they drew back into the slight shelter of a doorway to try making contact again. _They’re all right_ , Sabine thought, _they have to be_. She said into her comlink, “Spectre One, Spectre Two, come in.” When there was no response she added a little more desperately, “Hera, Kanan, please come in –”

She and Zeb had time to exchange another worried look before Hera’s voice came over the comlink. _“We’re here. We’re all right. What’s your twenty?”_

Sabine felt her knees sag slightly in relief, but kept it out of her voice as she replied, “Spectre Four and I are on the west side of the street, out of the blast radius, but we’ve got –”

_“Wait,”_ Hera said suddenly. She must have kept her thumb on the control, because Sabine heard her say, _“Kanan? What is it?”_

His voice a little more distant than Hera’s, he said, _“I sense –”_

There was a long moment of silence, into which Hera said, _“Just a minute, Spectre Five.”_

“Okay,” Sabine said, exchanging another look with Zeb. She wished she had any idea what was going on in Kanan’s head right now, but it was always hard to tell with him.

Then there was a sudden rustle of leather on the other end of the comlink, Kanan moving so quickly that the ends of his tabards must have slapped the comlink Hera was still holding. Sabine heard her breath catch as Hera shouted his name, then for a few seconds there was only the clatter of running bootsteps.

“Hera?” she gasped.

“What’s going on?” Zeb added, leaning down over her shoulder.

_“Spectre Five, this is Spectre Two, Spectre One and I are in pursuit –”_

Hera’s voice cut off abruptly.

“Hera!” Sabine exclaimed, but there was no response; the comlink had disconnected.

“Karabast!” Zeb spat, reaching over his shoulder for his bo-rifle. “That’s not good.”

“You think?” Sabine replaced the comlink on her belt and drew her blasters. Most bombers – Sabine included – stuck around to see the results of their work. There was a good chance that the perpetrator was still here, and Kanan, with his Force-enhanced senses, must have spotted him. Or her, Sabine corrected herself; statistically most bombers were male, but Sabine had met enough other women – and other genders – on the HoloNet boards devoted to explosives to know better than to make assumptions. Whoever it was, Hera had almost certainly run into them.

Adding blasters to the mix didn’t actually make it easier to get through the crowd. Sabine let Zeb clear the way, following as close behind him as she could manage. Stormtroopers were clearing the area around the staging ground by the time they finally reached it; they took one look at Zeb and Sabine and raised their weapons.

“Stop there!”

This was the problem with not wearing a uniform. “We’re Imperials!” Sabine shouted at them. “We’re with the Inquisitor and Agent Syndulla!”

“Put the weapons down and put your hands on your heads!”

Sabine hissed in frustration. “I’m ISB Probationary Agent Wren, ISB-849,” she snapped. “I’m going to reach for my code cylinder, okay? Try not to shoot me.”

A few of the stormtroopers looked at each other. Swallowing, Sabine holstered one of her blasters and pulled her code cylinder out of a belt pouch, tossing it to the nearest stormtrooper with an NCO’s colored pauldron. He caught it, said, “Watch them,” to the others, and took a handheld reader off his belt.

Sabine resisted the urge to twitch as he inserted it. She knew it was legit; she had gotten it only a few months ago, after her first six months on the _Ghost_ , when her probationary status had been on Hera and Kanan’s judgment rather than a formality allowing her to serve without technically being a cadet.

There was a long pause as the stormtrooper looked at the reader, looked back at her – at her armor, rather – then at the reader again. Finally he pulled the cylinder out and used it to gesture at Zeb. “What about that?”

“ISB-C-2586,” Zeb rumbled. “You want my cylinder too?”

Sabine saw the stormtrooper hesitate, then either he decided he didn’t want to mess with Zeb after all or remembered that there was, actually, a Lasat in the Imperial service currently on Lothal – she bet that that rumor had spread quickly once they had arrived.

“That won’t be necessary,” he said. “Let them through.”

He handed Sabine her cylinder back as the other stormtroopers backed off enough to let her and Zeb through. “We’re looking for the Inquisitor and Agent Syndulla,” she said. “Have you seen them?”

“They were here earlier,” the NCO said vaguely. “They ordered Minister Tua and Commandant Aresko taken inside the Imperial Complex.”

“And after that?” Zeb demanded.

The man shrugged.

“Thanks,” Sabine said dryly. “You’ve been very helpful.”

She put the code cylinder away and drew her other blaster as she and Zeb moved past the security cordon. Fortunately there hadn’t been too many people on the staging grounds aside from the transport and walker crews; the ranks of stormtroopers that had originally been planned had instead been deployed to look for the missing tech. Sabine could see the fallen hover-platform where Tua and the others had been standing, but couldn’t spot any sign of Hera or Kanan.

After a few minutes of walking around avoiding still-burning wreckage – Sabine was too worried about Hera and Kanan to even consider taking notes, the way she usually did at bomb sites – Sabine keyed her helmet comlink with one hand and said hesitantly, “Spectre Five to Spectre Two –”

Something beeped.

She and Zeb both turned in the direction of the sound. “Keep on it,” Zeb hissed at her; his hearing was better than hers, and Sabine followed him across the remains of the staging ground, repeating, “Spectre Five to Spectre Two,” until Zeb suddenly leaned down and picked something up off the ground.

Sabine dropped her hand from her helmet as he held it out for her inspection: Hera’s comlink. “Well, that’s not good.”

Zeb gave her a long look, and she made a vague gesture in response. “Should have put a tracker on her,” she muttered.

One of the still standing AT-DPs made an ominous groaning sound and they both looked up reflexively, Sabine automatically calculating its distance from their current position and whether or not it would hit them if it fell. Most of the other Imperial personnel had already fled the staging ground, but the few stormtroopers that remained were watching the thing warily.

_Probably not going to get crushed to death_ , Sabine decided, and went back to scanning the immediate area. She didn’t think it had been long enough for Hera to have gone too far, or for whoever had taken her – why would someone take Hera? – to go too far, anyway.

The AT-DP groaned again, the heavy chassis of the cab shivering on top of the long, fire-scorched legs. Zeb took a wary step backwards away from it.

“We’re fine,” Sabine started to say, then in the near-silence that seemed to follow the groan, heard shouting.

It wasn’t the desperate, panicked screaming that had immediately followed the explosion and was still coming from the street. This was words and emotion, a man and a woman yelling at each other in a mix of Basic and Twi’leki. One of them was definitely Hera.

Zeb had heard it too. He frowned at her in consternation, then pocketed Hera’s comlink and swung his bo-rifle up. Sabine drew both her blasters, looking around for the source of the sound – the maze of buildings that surrounded the staging area confusing her briefly – until she spotted the dark opening of an alley that had originally been closed off for the parade, but whose entrance was now clear, the barricade knocked aside against one of the flanking walls.

“Come on,” she said to Zeb, starting towards it.

Hera’s voice became clear as they approached, moving without being told to flank the entrance to the alley. “I’m _not_ going back with you, Doriah. I know what I am. I’m not like my father.”

“I’m not leaving you here,” snapped the man; he had a light Rylothean accent that curled the edges of his vowels and softened his consonants. “This isn’t right, Hera. You’re not an Imperial.”

“I am a servant of the Empire,” Hera replied, her voice sharp and her Rylothean accent stronger than Sabine had ever heard it before, though it wasn’t as strong as the man’s. As she went on, her voice rising nearly to a scream, Sabine peered cautiously around the corner into the alley, Zeb doing the same.

Hera was backed up against the wall, held in place by a green-skinned Twi’lek male who looked about her own age. Even in profile the resemblance between the two was clear; despite the situation Sabine’s fingers were suddenly itching for pen and paper or stylus and datapad, mentally sketching out the pair and the way the shadows highlighted the hollows of their faces, the curves of their headtails, Hera’s markings seeming to glow amidst the gloom. They had the same sharp chins and high cheekbones, only Hera’s uniform distinguishing her from his dark-colored spacer’s garb. They could have been siblings.

_Maybe they are_ , Sabine realized with a shock; they looked alike enough to be twins, and she didn’t know anything about Hera’s family. She caught Zeb’s eye and nodded once, stepping into the entrance to the alley as the man said, “I don’t accept that.”

“You’re going to have to,” Sabine said, and both of them jumped and looked over, Hera’s green eyes wide and desperate and the stranger’s brown gaze determined. Except for his eye color and the cross-hatch of scars on his forehead, they were as nearly identical as a man and a woman could be. He had to be a relative, if not a brother.

She pointed both blasters at him as Zeb stepped up behind her. “Unless you want a couple of blaster bolts between your eyes,” she said, “you’ll get away from her right now.”

Hera closed her eyes, slumping in the man’s grip; Sabine couldn’t tell if it was resignation or relief.

“This is none of your concern,” the stranger said.

“Yeah, I kinda think it is,” Zeb said. “Hera?”

“Don’t,” she said softly. After a tense moment, she swallowed, then raised her gaze to the man, who was still holding onto her upper arms. “Doriah, let go of me,” she said in Twi’leki, the words a little halting. “Please.”

The man hesitated, then obeyed, taking a step back and raising his hands. “Hera –”

Sabine shifted her aim to track him. “No sudden moves, pal.”

“Don’t,” Hera said again, but this time it was directed at her and Zeb. She looked back at the other Twi’lek, then added, “Doriah’s not a threat.”

“Hera –” Zeb began.

She took a deep breath, then drew herself up and raised her chin. “Put your weapons away. That’s an order.”

Doing so made Sabine’s back teeth itch, but she obeyed, twirling her blasters before holstering them to burn off some of her excess energy. Zeb grunted something indistinguishable and slung his bo-rifle back over his shoulder, balling one hand into a fist and cupping it into the other, his gaze fixed on the stranger. Hera’s gaze flickered towards him, then back to the other Twi’lek.

“You have to go now, Doriah,” she said in Twi’leki.

He shook his head and replied in the same language, “Not without you.”

Sabine’s grasp of the language wasn’t very good – she hadn’t even known that Hera spoke it, or she would have asked for lessons, instead of the HoloNet tutorials she had been working through ever since she had joined the crew – but it was enough to understand most of the conversation. She thought that Zeb was probably at a total loss, though.

“I’m not going with you,” Hera said. “My place is here.”

“Your place is with your people,” Doriah said. “With your clan, with your family.”

Hera’s lip curled. “You sound like my father.”

“Well, one of us has to.” Except for the register of his voice, his tone was exactly the same as hers. After a moment he went on, a little more gently, “I promised Xiaan that if I saw you I’d bring you home.”

Hera looked down, then shook her head without looking at him. “No, Doriah.” She took a deep breath before raising her head again. “This is who I am. Everything I have is here.”

“No, Hera, you have your family –”

“My family is here!” Hera snapped. “My lover, my crew, my ship – everything I have, everything I am is here. I’m not that girl anymore. I lost everything once. I’m not losing it again.”

Doriah took a step forward and caught her shoulder in one hand, making Sabine and Zeb both tense. Hera just looked up at him, catching her lower lip between her teeth. “I can’t,” she said before he could say anything. “I can’t and I won’t. Don’t ask me again, Doriah.”

“This is not your life.”

“Yes, it is,” Hera said. “None of us are living the lives we expected to when we were children, but that doesn’t make them any less our own.” She glanced aside as he shook his head.

“Hera…”

She hugged him without warning, flinging her arms around his neck with a suddenness that made Sabine’s hands tighten on her blaster grips. She could just barely make out the words that Hera whispered against his ear: “I’m sorry.”

Doriah put his arms around her, holding her close and said, “What am I supposed to tell Xiaan? Or your parents?”

Hera shut her eyes, turning her cheek against his shoulder. “Tell Xiaan I love her,” she said. “I don’t care what you tell my parents. They can go to blazes for all I care.”

Her shoulders shaking, she pulled back from him and wrapped her arms around herself. “Get out of here, Doriah,” she said, her breath coming in short rasping gasps. “Before I change my mind about whether or not to arrest you.”

“Hera –”

“Go!” she almost shouted. “Get out of here!”

He gave her an anguished look, then his gaze flicked to Sabine and Zeb and he stepped away. “This isn’t over, Hera,” he said.

Hera looked aside. “Yes, it is,” she said, the words nearly a prayer. “It has to be.”

“No.” He began to back away, heading towards the opposite end of the alley with his gaze still fixed on Hera until he finally turned away. He was almost out of the alley when Hera finally looked up, staring after him until he suddenly looked back. Their gazes met and held, until Doriah finally turned away, gone an instant later.

Hera crumpled back against the wall, her hands over her face, and began to cry.

Sabine started forward. “Hera?”

“I’m fine,” she said quickly, her voice a dragged out gasp. “I’m fi – where’s Kanan?”

“He was with you,” Zeb said, standing forward on his toes as if wanting to go to Hera but unwilling to do so.

Hera made a gesture with her chin that was half a nod and half a headshake, her headtails bobbing. After a moment she looked up, swiping one hand angrily beneath her eyes, though it did little to conceal her tear-dampened cheeks. “You can’t tell him,” she said. “Promise me –”

“Who was that?” Sabine asked, adding hesitantly, “Your – brother?”

“My cousin.” Her voice was bleak.

It was on the tip of Sabine’s tongue to ask what that had been about before remembering that Hera wasn’t aware she knew Twi’leki; she hadn’t meant either of them to understand that conversation. Admitting that she had felt a little like betraying Hera’s trust.

“Okay,” Zeb said slowly, then, “Where’s Kanan?”

“He – there was –” Hera swiped at her eyes again, visibly rattled. After a moment she drew herself up, and Sabine saw her wrap her professionalism around herself like a veil. Her accent fell away as she said, “There was a boy. Kanan went after him; I don’t know why. He hasn’t called you?”

“No,” Sabine said. “We don’t know where he is.”

*

Ezra felt the explosion before it happened.

It was a backwash of heat across his face, a shudder in the air and a faint echo of sound. Confused, he looked around, searching for the source, and as a result wasn’t looking down when the bombs started going off. Ezra threw his arms up over his face to protect his eyes from the brilliant glare, the sound buffeting his ears as he ducked down below the parapet, huddling against it for dear life.

He didn’t know how long he stayed there, but eventually he raised himself up again, bracing himself on the parapet as he stared down at the street below. Everyone who had turned out for the parade seemed to be fleeing in the opposite direction, shouting incoherently and knocking each other over in their panic.

Something else exploded and Ezra flinched, turning in the direction of the sound to look at the staging ground. Where previously there had been neatly ordered ranks of walkers, TIEs, and troop transports, now there only seemed to be chaos. Some vehicles had been torn entirely apart by the force of the explosions, while others remained whole but blackened. Flames climbed high into the sky, smaller explosions going off at irregular intervals – fuel tanks, Ezra guessed. As he watched, a damaged walker teetered heavily sideways and began to fall as one of its legs crumpled completely. Stormtroopers scattered before it, running as quickly as they could, but Ezra knew that they wouldn’t make it out of range before the walker fell. He grimaced, starting to look away because he didn’t like stormtroopers, but he didn’t actually want to watch them die –

And saw the walker freeze in mid-air, as if a giant invisible hand had reached out and caught it.

Ezra stood up, staring, then got up on the parapet so that he had a better view. The AT-DP went rearing backwards and fell, landing on top of another walker that had already collapsed. Ezra’s gaze went to two figures standing on the staging ground, behind the Imperial barricade, just as the taller of the two lowered his hands.

It was the guy he had seen earlier, the Imperial in the weird black uniform. _He did that_ , Ezra thought. _How did he do that? That’s_ –

Impossible, he had meant to finish the thought, but his mind stuttered and gave out on the word.

Ezra knew that he should leave, because all of Capital City was going to be swarming with stormtroopers after this, but for some reason he couldn’t seem to make himself do so. He walked along the top of the parapet so that he had a better view of the guy and the Twi’lek woman as they ran over to the fallen hover-platform, watching as they helped Minister Tua up and then sent her off in the direction of the Imperial Complex with a phalanx of stormtroopers. He was still watching them when the guy suddenly looked up.

Ezra caught his breath, as though by not breathing he could avoid drawing the stranger’s attention. He could feel something, that low not-sound rolling through his entire body, and with despairing certainty realized that he probably couldn’t move even if he had wanted to. He saw the guy turning, his gaze searching along the rooftops and coming to rest on Ezra.

_Maybe he doesn’t see me_ , Ezra thought. _Maybe_ –

He felt the moment drag out between them, the guy looking at him and Ezra looking back. Pressure built and built, around him, inside him, everywhere, until Ezra thought that he would burst from the strength of it. The very air seemed to have been turned into some other substance; a single spark and the entire galaxy would blaze.

It was too much. Too much; Ezra’s body, his _mind_ , couldn’t contain whatever this was. He could feel everything – _everything_ – stretching out around him, a connection to every living thing on Lothal, millions – billions – of beings, from the stormtroopers in the Imperial Complex to the fleeing parade-goers to the loth-cats out in the plains. It was – it was everything, and Ezra couldn’t bear it.

The moment broke.

Ezra had a heartbeat to draw in a ragged, gasping breath before the guy came pelting across the staging ground towards him. For an instant all Ezra could do was stare, seeing him toss himself up in a backflip, bouncing briefly off the top of one of the troop transports before catching hold of a protruding spar from one of the nearby buildings and letting momentum carry him around it before he release it and went flying, landing in a roll on the roof of the building nearest Ezra. He was already back on his feet before Ezra had time to process what had just happened.

Ezra ran.

He stooped to catch up his backpack as he did so, pulling it on as he ran across the familiar rooftops. He leapt the gap between this building and the next, the impact jarring every bone in his body as he landed on the hard surface of the other building, but he didn’t dare slow down or look back.

Part of him was screaming that this couldn’t be happening, it just couldn’t; Ezra was nothing, no one, just another loth-rat making his way on the streets of Capital City. The Empire didn’t – couldn’t – want anything to do with him. Hadn’t the Empire already had enough to do with the Bridgers to bother with him, too?

Apparently not.

Ezra didn’t have the time to think, so he ran, letting his knowledge of the city guide him over rooftops, leaping from building to building and dodging lines of laundry, dashing through gardens, until he was panting and out of breath, every muscle aching. He glanced back twice, each time seeing the Imperial close behind him, always seemingly on the verge of catching up. Ezra wondered briefly if the guy was actually letting him go, if he could have caught Ezra easily, then he had to make a running leap over a narrow street and the thought went clean out of his head.

He tripped on a loose tile as he landed and went sliding backwards, clawing at the roof and just catching the edge of it with his fingertips before he went entirely over the edge. Nervously, Ezra glanced over his shoulder; he was several stories above ground level and while he could have survived a fall from that height, there was a good chance he’d break bones.

Arms protesting, he hauled himself back up onto the rooftop, turning as quickly as he could to look back for the Imperial. The guy had been close enough on his heels that he should have been right behind him, if not on the same roof already, but he was nowhere in sight.

_Not good, not good_ , Ezra thought; he doubted that he had lost him during his wild flight. It was possible, but it didn’t – it didn’t _feel_ right. Ezra could feel him like the ever-present awareness of a sore tooth, a whisper at the very edges of his consciousness that made the hair on the back of his neck stand up. He didn’t know what to think anymore, if there was any way that he could make the world make sense again.

This was, he decided resignedly, probably a trap that he was going to end up springing by accident because he just couldn’t see it, but there was nothing else he could do. He gave the area one last look, keeping his right hand on the energy slingshot on his left wrist, but there was nothing to be seen except for the plume of smoke rising from the staging ground in front of the Imperial Complex, now blocks and blocks away. Ezra felt like he had crossed half the city trying to get away from it.

He turned away and walked gingerly across the slanting rooftop – rare in Capital City, which usually only had flat roofs – until he found a fire escape. He clambered down it and dropped lightly to the ground; it would probably be smarter to stay on the rooftops, but right now he didn’t think there was a single part of his body that didn’t hurt. He didn’t think he could bear even the thought of leaping from rooftop to rooftop again, even if he wasn’t being pursued this time.

Ezra didn’t know where he was going to go; he couldn’t shake the vague, wild impression that the Imperial was still out there and somehow he would snatch the thought right out of Ezra’s head, as impossible as that seemed. Of course, an hour ago Ezra hadn’t thought that anyone could stop a falling AT-DP in mid-air either, and that he had actually seen. It felt insane, but it had happened.

Shaking his head, Ezra started to make his way through streets that he knew better from above than from ground-level. There weren’t many other people out, which made him simultaneously grateful and worried, because he would have liked to be able to lose himself in a crowd. He kept looking up, searching the rooftops lining whatever street he was on; he couldn’t shake the feeling that the Imperial was still up there somewhere, that he was still following Ezra. But there was nothing to see.

He didn’t have anywhere specific in mind to go, unwilling to bring the Imperial down on any of his usual hidey-holes, so he wandered aimlessly and let his feet guide his way. Somehow he wasn’t surprised when he turned a corner and found himself on one end of the cul-de-sac where his parents had used to live.

This has been a nice neighborhood, a long time ago. The Bridgers had been, if not well-off, at least solidly middle-class, and their neighbors had been likewise. But following their arrest and the Imperial warning signs slapped prominently on every door and window, property values had plummeted. No one wanted to live around that, and so people had found excuses to move away. Ezra still remembered coming home and knocking on doors, trying to find out what had happened to his parents, what had happened to his home. Only one of the people whom he had always thought of as his parents’ friends had been willing to tell him, and afterwards she had slammed her door in his face. It was like he had been branded; none of the people he had known before would even look at him.

He hadn’t tried to go home for a long time after that.

There wasn’t anyone still living here; the streetlamps which had once illuminated it had long since died or been broken, leaving the cul-de-sac in almost complete darkness. When he had come here earlier to hide his speeder bike, Ezra had gone ‘round the back; he hadn’t seen the front in years, but he was still pretty sure that he could find his way to the front door. At least he hadn’t lost the keycard during the day’s events, even if he wasn’t sure why he had brought it with him in the first place. It was a good thing that he had; he could have climbed in through a window, but this would be easier.

He put a hand out to touch the nearest wall, groping his way towards the place where he knew his front door was. It was a double dark moon tonight and clouds had obscured the stars, though you couldn’t really see them from Capital City anyway. Ezra stumbled over a piece of broken masonry, but eventually found his way towards the front door and pulled his backpack around to his front, fumbling the keycard out. He swiped it through the reader and the door started to open with a groan, though it got stuck halfway through.

“Oh, come _on_ ,” Ezra grumbled to himself, dropping the keycard into a pocket and reaching out with both hands to shove the door the rest of the way open. He had only gotten it to move a few grudging centimeters when someone grabbed him by the shoulder and pulled him inside the building.

Ezra landed on the floor hard enough to jar his teeth; he nearly bit through his tongue. He was already grabbing for his energy slingshot as he looked up, expecting to see the Imperial who had been chasing him, but instead he saw three pairs of eyes that gleamed gold in the gloom, the beings they were attached to utterly indistinguishable amongst the shadows.

A moment later someone turned a handlamp on and Ezra saw two male Twi’leks, one with dark blue skin and the other whose skin was a kind of greenish-tan, and a tall, beautiful Togruta woman wearing a poncho with the hood put back. Standing a little behind them was a green-skinned Rodian female; she was the one holding the handlamp.

“It’s just a kid,” said the greenish Twi’lek, lowering the blaster he was holding. “What’s he doing here?”

Ezra scrambled to his feet, fingers still resting on the draw of his energy slingshot, but he had the feeling that that wouldn’t be the best way to get out of this situation. “What are you doing in my parents’ house?” he demanded.

“Your parents?” said the Twi’lek who had spoken before. “This house has been abandoned for –”

“Eight years today,” said a dreamy, half-familiar voice.

The Rodian woman put her free hand out to stop the speaker, but not before he wandered forward into the light cast by her handlamp. It was another Rodian, a male in that indeterminate stage Rodians sometimes reached in their thirties and forties, and there was something odd about his head – he had something on it, encircling the back of his skull and resting just over his ears.

Ezra squinted at him, intrigued by this new apparition, and then realized that he actually recognized him. “Tseebo?”

“You know him?” said the Togruta.

“He used to be a friend of my parents,” Ezra said. “Emphasis on ‘used to be.’” He knew that the Imperials had been hunting Tseebo all day, but had no idea why. Maybe they were just bored and releasing random technicians was how they entertained themselves on slow days.

He gave the foursome another look, frowning, and said doubtfully, “You don’t work for the Empire.” Bounty hunters? But bounty hunters usually worked alone, at least as far as he had seen – it wasn’t as though they came to Lothal very often.

“Yeah, they’re not too fond of our type,” said the blue Twi’lek. He looked at the Togruta and added, “What do we do with the kid?”

“How about we don’t do anything with the kid?” Ezra suggested, edging backwards towards the door. “You take – him, or whatever – and go on your way, and I’ll go on mine –”

“Wait,” said the Togruta.

“Uh –”

She waved the Twi’leks back and stepped forward. “Where _are_ your parents?” she asked.

Before Ezra could respond, Tseebo said, still in the same dreamy, unfocused voice, “Ephraim and Mira Bridger, arrested eight years ago today on charges of treason and inciting sedition against the Empire. Left behind one child, Ezra Bridger, born fifteen years ago today.”

“Yeah, thanks for the history lesson,” Ezra snapped.

The Rodian woman tugged on Tseebo’s arm, muttering something to him in Rodian. He looked vaguely in her direction, though his gaze was actually focused a few inches to the left of her head.

The Togruta frowned a little. “You don’t have anyone?” she asked Ezra.

He crossed his arms over his chest. “What do you care?”

The corner of her mouth lifted very slightly. “Because it doesn’t sound to me like you have any reason to love the Empire.”

“I could leave it or take it,” Ezra said. “Look, just take him and go, if that’s what you want. I’m not going to tell anyone.” As if any Imperial was going to listen to anything he had to say, anyway. Not that Ezra would. He had grown up under the shadow of the Empire, but that didn’t mean he cared for it one way or another. It was only all he had ever known.

“We were planning on doing that anyway,” said the greenish Twi’lek. “Come on, Fulcrum, we don’t have time for this. Syndulla’s distraction isn’t going to last forever. Pretty soon the Imps are going to be back looking for us. Him.” He jerked a thumb in Tseebo’s direction. “Leave the kid.”

Fulcrum – what kind of name was that? – glanced back over her shoulder at him and frowned again. Sounding a little nervous, the Rodian woman added, “Zabo’s right. We don’t have time for this.”

“All right,” said Fulcrum, but turned back to Ezra. “Just give me a minute.”

“What does the Empire want with Tseebo anyway?” Ezra said doubtfully. “He _works_ for them. And what’s that thing on his head?”

“The Empire sometimes implants lower-level technicians with cybernetic circuits to increase productivity,” Fulcrum said. “Your friend –”

“He’s _not_ my friend.”

“– Tseebo here downloaded a huge amount of information from the Imperial Information Office and then ran. We’re going to take him somewhere where we can use that information.”

“What, against the Empire?” Ezra snorted. “Yeah, right. What good’s that going to do?”

“A single chance is a galaxy of hope,” said Fulcrum. She looked at him for a long moment, frowning again.

“Come _on_ ,” hissed the Rodian woman. “The longer we’re out here the more likely it is that Doriah and Numa are going to get caught.”

Fulcrum nodded absently, but her attention was on Ezra, her brows drawn together in something that might have been confusion. He backed another few steps away from her towards the door. _First it’s that Imperial, then it’s these guys –_

Stuff like this was why he hated Empire Day.

“All right,” Fulcrum said finally. “Let’s go.”

Ezra bolted for the door, slamming his fist into the control and leaning heavily back on one foot as it creaked open. He darted out into the dark street, pulling himself up onto a half-collapsed canopy attached to one of the neighboring houses, and from there up onto the roof. He paused on the edge, watching as the Togruta and the Twi’leks emerged, the two Rodians following close behind. Ezra made his way over the rooftops, watching them as they approached the cul-de-sac’s exit.

They were nearly there when a dark-clad figure dropped suddenly down in front of them. As he straightened upright, reaching for something on his belt, Ezra saw that it was the Imp who had chased him halfway across the city.

Fulcrum put her arms out, holding back her companions.

The Imperial flicked his right hand out sideways, a beam of red plasma hissing into existence from the hilt he was holding. Even Ezra knew what that was, although he had never seen one before.

A lightsaber.

“I think you have something that belongs to me,” said the Inquisitor.

*

In the gloom of the darkened street, all Ahsoka could see of the Inquisitor was his silhouette and the lightsaber in his hand. He was near-human; she could guess that from his build, but that didn’t particularly narrow down which of the known Inquisitors he could be. So far he had only ignited one blade on his lightsaber, making it impossible for her to see any of the finer details on the hilt. And his voice – there was something familiar about it, but she couldn’t decide what, save that he had the same upper-class Coruscanti accent that Master Kenobi had had, half her lifetime ago. It was the accent that every Imperial officer from the Deep Core to the Outer Rim tried to imitate, but this one was genuine.

And Ahsoka couldn’t feel him in the Force.

If she hadn’t been able to see him, she wouldn’t have even known he was there until it was too late. The Force flowed around him without so much as an interruption; even looking straight at him Ahsoka couldn’t sense him at all, and that fact made the fine hairs on the back of her neck rise. She had encountered Inquisitors before who were good at concealing their presence in the Force, but to do so on this level…you had to have power to conceal power. Most Inquisitors weren’t strong enough in the Force for that.

“What _is_ that?” said Kaylani from behind Ahsoka.

“Doesn’t matter,” Zabo said, and fired three times in quick succession.

The Inquisitor batted the blaster shots aside as if they were nothing, the glow of his lightsaber briefly illuminating green eyes and high, flat cheekbones before he flicked the blade aside again. He took a step forward and Ahsoka snapped, “Run!”

“But –”

“I’ll handle this,” Ahsoka said.

They didn’t try to protest again. Ahsoka heard their bootsteps beat against the battered pavement, suspecting they were headed back to the abandoned Bridger home and the backdoor through which they had originally entered. If the Inquisitor had meant to trap them, he had chosen his ambush point badly.

He put his head a little to one side, the whites of his eyes reflecting the red blade of his lightsaber. Ahsoka reached beneath her poncho, her hands on her own lightsaber hilts, then changed her mind and whipped her poncho off in one clean motion, throwing it at the Inquisitor.

He jerked back in surprise as the cloth wrapped around his lightsaber hilt, yanking it out of his hand as Ahsoka reached out with the Force. Her own lightsabers leapt into her hands, barely igniting before the Inquisitor was _there_ , ducking under the arc of her primary blade as she swung at him and slamming the side of his hand into her left wrist, making her hand open involuntarily and drop her shoto. It deactivated as it fell and he kicked it aside, leaning out of the way of her next strike with her remaining blade as he did so, already twisting to grab her arm and spin her around.

Ahsoka went flying as he released her, crashing into the nearest wall and losing her grip on her remaining lightsaber. She threw herself out of the way as he came towards her, hooking a foot around his ankle and pulling him off his feet. He hit the ground beside her with a grunt; Ahsoka swung a leg up to kick him in the jaw, but he rolled out of the way, flipping to his feet at almost the same time Ahsoka did.

There was just enough light in the alley to see him raise his fists, settling into a brawler’s hipshot fighting stance. Ahsoka felt the corner of her mouth lift in something that was almost a smile, but she was already moving, ducking the punch he threw at her and slamming a kick into his side that she might as well have aimed at a stone wall, for all the good it did her. He swung into a roundhouse kick that just caught the top of her left montral; she spun with the motion, slamming her elbow into the side of his neck.

She struck the gorget on his armor, her entire arm going numb as he jerked away, hissing in something that was probably pain but already swinging at the place she had been half a heartbeat earlier. Ahsoka hit him again, a solid punch that would have done real damage if he hadn’t dodged it.

They traded blows back and forth in the darkened, debris-laded space of the cul-de-sac, both of them scoring enough hits that Ahsoka could smell both her own blood and his – human, apparently. She could taste it in her mouth; she’d cut her lip on her teeth at some point, and one of her eyes was swollen nearly shut. He wasn’t doing much better.

The Inquisitor was fast, the way only trained Force-sensitives were fast, and he had height and reach on her. Ahsoka had expected him to go for his lightsaber a long time ago; Inquisitors, like most people who weren’t raised with a lightsaber in their hand, tended to think of the weapon as a solution for all ills, a magic wand that would counteract everything else on the playing field. This one seemed content to wear her down in hand-to-hand, but he never reached for the Force, a compunction that Ahsoka didn’t share.

She hit a wall hard enough that it seemed to rattle every bone in her body, but a gleam of metal caught her eye and she snatched up her lightsaber, throwing out one hand and grabbing for the Force. The Inquisitor went flying backwards to land in a sliding crouch, bracing himself with one hand on the battered pavement. Ahsoka straightened upright, igniting her lightsaber – she didn’t like killing without need, but an Inquisitor was a threat to the galaxy that couldn’t be left untended to. This one had to go.

She felt the Force flicker as he stretched a hand out, metal rattling briefly across the pavement as his lightsaber responded to the summons. For a bare instant, less than a heartbeat, Ahsoka could sense him in the Force – and realized, with a shock, that she recognized his signature.

She said, “I know what you did.”

*

Numa was already at the shuttle by the time Doriah reached it, standing by the ramp with her blaster drawn and looking anxiously around. Fulcrum’s astromech was with her, periscope extended from its dome as it scanned the surrounding area. It beeped urgently as Doriah approached and Numa turned, starting to raise her blaster before she recognized him.

“Doriah!” She threw herself towards him, not bothering to holster her blaster; it bumped against his lekku as she hugged him.

Doriah was too tired and heartsick to fend her off, so he just stood there until she released him and stepped back. “What happened?” she demanded. “Where were you? I tried to find you, but the Imperials –”

“It’s not important,” Doriah lied; it was family business and nothing to do with her. He looked down at QT-KT as the droid rolled up to them, making a querying noise, then up at Numa again. “The others aren’t back yet?”

Numa shook her head, belatedly holstering her weapon. “I tried to raise them on my comlink, but the Imperials are jamming all transmissions that aren’t on their own frequencies. QT-KT’s been monitoring the official channels, but there hasn’t been anything yet –”

“That’s probably a good sign,” Doriah said. He walked over to the shuttle’s ramp and sat down on the edge of it, rubbing his hands over his face.

He could barely think about the others, because the only thing he could think about was Hera. Hera, who had been in his arms, who was alive and well, who was wearing an Imperial uniform, gods help him –

This couldn’t be happening. Uncle Cham and Aunt Alecto had made it out like Hera was somewhere like he and Xiaan had been, some Imperial’s pet and bed-warmer, and Mother of Mountains, Doriah had never thought to think otherwise, because that was what he had been. Hera – he had never even thought to question them further.

“Doriah?” Numa said uncertainly.

He looked up to see her standing over him, her expression concerned. “What is it?” she asked. “Is there anything I can do?”

“Can you change the past?” Doriah said.

She blinked, her eyes widening a little, but before she could answer, bootsteps came pounding through the entrance to the landing bay.

Doriah was on his feet in an instant, both his blasters drawn before he recognized the other members of their group. Zabo was in front, Kaylani in the middle pulling along an unfamiliar Rodian with an Imperial cybernetic implant on his head, and Edeleh brought up the rear, backing into the landing bay with his blaster outstretched.

Numa let out a breath of relief, lowering the blaster she had drawn. “You found him –”

“Where’s Fulcrum?” Doriah said.

“There was an Inquisitor,” Zabo said. “Fulcrum stayed behind to hold him off so that the rest of us could get away, but we don’t have much time before he comes after us. We should leave now.” He started up the ramp of the shuttle.

Doriah grabbed his sleeve. “What do you think you’re doing?”

“Leaving,” Zabo snapped. “You want to stay here and get snapped up by an Inquisitor? No thanks.” He tried to pull free, but Doriah tightened his grip.

“We’re not leaving anyone behind,” he said.

“It was an Inquisitor, Doriah! She’s already dead. Which we’ll be too, unless we get out of here.” His lip curled. “And it’s not like she was one of us anyway.”

Doriah didn’t let him go, but he turned his head to look at Edeleh and Kaylani. “Was she still alive when you left?”

Edeleh grimaced, his lekku lifting a little. “She looked like she had it handled, but –”

“Then we’re not leaving her,” Doriah said. “Get your cowardly ass back down here, Zabo.”

“You’re not the Syndulla yet,” Zabo sneered. “I don’t take orders from you. And we’re leaving. I wouldn’t have thought that you of all people would want to go back to the Imps, but maybe you miss it –”

Doriah wasn’t consciously aware of punching him, but the next thing he knew Zabo was sitting on the ground in front of him, raising a hand to his split lip. His greenish-tan fingers came away red with blood; he looked at them, then bared sharpened teeth and threw himself at Doriah.

Doriah hit the ground with Zabo on top of him, rolling to throw the other Twi’lek off. They both came up at the same time, Doriah ducking Zabo’s swing and slamming a punch into his stomach. Zabo grunted, doubling over, and Doriah swung in a roundhouse kick that knocked him back across the landing bay’s floor. Zabo groaned, tried to get up, and then slumped back.

Doriah wiped the back of his hand over his mouth and looked up to see the others all staring at him, all except for the strange Rodian. Numa said hesitantly, “Doriah –”

“I’m going to find Fulcrum,” Doriah said, watching QT-KT roll over to inspect Zabo’s limp body. “If he moves? Shoot him.”

*

“What?”

The Inquisitor froze, his unlit lightsaber in his hand. There was a flicker of confusion in the Force, enough for Ahsoka to be absolutely certain that his signature matched the one which had been wound through the kyber crystal just before it had self-destructed.

“I know what you did,” she repeated, igniting her lightsaber. The Inquisitor’s confusion, the faint emotional overtones that accompanied it, told her something else, too. She had been wrong. It hadn’t been a trap after all. “Why?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I think you do,” Ahsoka said, taking a step towards him; broken glass crunched under her boot and she was briefly grateful she hadn’t landed on it at any point in the fight. “You’re the one who really destroyed the kyber shipment.”

The Inquisitor took a reflexive step back, his Force-signature flickering; now that Ahsoka had a read on it, she could feel the way he was hiding inside the living Force, layering the shards of himself between the connecting waves of Force energy that bound up the universe. An Inquisitor couldn’t have done it. A Sith might be able to, though Ahsoka didn’t know why one would bother; it wasn’t exactly their style. A Jedi –

The Inquisitor fell back another step as Ahsoka advanced. He still hadn’t bothered to ignite his lightsaber, and he was retreating into deeper shadows; she couldn’t see his face.

“Why?” she asked him. “Why did you do it?”

He shook his head slightly, a whisper of movement in the shadows. “I –”

Barriss had been horrified by the kyber crystal, enough to commit her first real act of treason against the Empire. No other Inquisitor that Ahsoka had met would have that kind of compunction, but Barriss had been a Jedi. Some things you could never break yourself of, no matter how far you fell. Some things went too deep.

“Caleb Dume,” Ahsoka said, suddenly certain.

The Inquisitor ignited his lightsaber with a hiss of expanding plasma, the scarlet blade illuminating his face as he raised it before him. His green eyes were wide, the whites tinted red by the glow of his lightsaber, but Ahsoka couldn’t sense the dark side hanging about him no matter how deeply she reached into the Force. “That’s not my name,” he snarled.

Ahsoka moved towards him again; he started to step away but was stopped by the side of the building he had backed himself against. Instead he raised his lightsaber, his gaze fixed on her. All Ahsoka could sense from him was panic.

Blasterfire shattered the moment.

Ahsoka whirled as the Inquisitor deflected the bolts, spotting Doriah Syndulla standing in the entrance to the cul-de-sac with both his blasters raised. He fired again, the Inquisitor’s blade flashing as he deflected the bolts to either side of him.

“Fulcrum!” Doriah shouted; Ahsoka saw the Inquisitor’s head snap up, apparently recognizing the name. _Blast, that’s that blown._ “Come on!”

She would have to deal with Caleb Dume another day. Ahsoka turned and ran, holding a hand out for her fallen shoto as she did. It slapped into her palm and she spun, grabbing for the Force to heave up a pile of rubble as the Inquisitor started to follow them. He threw up his hands and the collection of shattered brick and splintered wooden spars hung motionless in the air between them before Ahsoka shoved with all her strength and sent both him and the rubble flying backwards. Doriah fired again for good measure, then they both ran.

*

Ezra caught his breath, leaning down over the side of the roof as Fulcrum and the other Twi’lek vanished into the night. The rubble had caught the Inquisitor and sent him flying back into the wall of Ezra’s old house, but as Ezra watched it came rising up in bits and pieces, then drifted a few feet sideways and clattered to the ground as the Inquisitor emerged. There was blood on his face, nearly black in the darkness of the alley; the Inquisitor rubbed at it with the back of his hand, then looked around.

His lightsaber came rising up from the pile of debris he had just dug himself out of. The Inquisitor caught it and replaced it on his belt. Then he looked up.

Ezra reared back. He wasn’t sure what had compelled him to stick around in the first place, even though he knew he should have run at the first sign of a fight. But they had had _lightsabers_ – it had started out like something out of a holodrama, the interdicted ones that were still sold on the black market. Ezra had never seen anything like that before, though he had witnessed – and been part of – more brawls that he could count.

Cautiously he looked back at the cul-de-sac. The Inquisitor was still standing there, looking up at him. He wiped at the blood on his face again, then raised two fingers to his forehead in a brief salute before turning away.

Ezra sat back. He should go. He should go _now_ , but he couldn’t seem to make himself move.

When he looked again, the Inquisitor was gone.


	10. Siren

It was nearly dawn by the time he reluctantly conceded that he probably had to make his way back to the Imperial Complex, if only because waiting much longer would result in Hera sending a search team after him.

He had checked his comlink only to find that someone in the Imperial Complex – probably Commandant Aresko, he seemed like the sort – had ordered a complete communications blackout on Lothal. The Imperial frequencies were still active, but the one the _Ghost_ ’s crew used was nothing but static. He could have just called the Imperial Complex and asked for Hera, but…no. He could sense his team through the Force; that was all he needed to know that they were all right.

He should have gone back immediately, he knew that. He should have called in an alert and then gone back to the Imperial Complex to check in with his team, or on to the spaceport to meet the stormtroopers that would have been sent there in response to his alert. He should have gone back to the Imperial Complex and contacted the Crucible, contacted his master, and told them – told them –

Told them that he had failed, and not merely because Fulcrum was a Jedi, or had trained as one, and had escaped, but all the other reasons too. And she knew. She _knew_ , and Force help him, what did that mean? If the Crucible found out – if his master found out – 

He had to stop in the middle of the otherwise deserted street and dig the heels of his hands into the skin above his eyes. If the Crucible found out, then merely dying would be the least of his concerns.

That old instinct, the one driven him by Depa Billaba’s last words and eight years of terror, still whispered _run, Jedi, run away and never look back._

Run, Jedi.

The Hunter had told him that too, on one of his first missions off Mustafar, when they had been paired together because new Inquisitors sometimes snapped once free of the Crucible, and because the Inquisition had wanted, very badly, to know what he would do once they lengthened his leash. They had been in one of the hangar bays on the _Revenge_ , the star destroyer they had been assigned to, and for some reason he had been looking at one of the shuttles. The Hunter had curled a hand over the back of his neck and leaned close to whisper in his ear, _run, Jedi_.

When he had looked back at the Hunter, all he had been able to see was the Pau’an’s terrible smile, his fingers playing idly over the hilt of his lightsaber as he waited to see what would happen.

_Run, Jedi._

There was nowhere left to run to. There never had been, really; he had just put off the inevitable for a few years.

Nowhere left to run. No one left to be. Just borrowed time.

He put his hands down and started walking again, conscious of every aching muscle and each tiny burning cut. He had taken a couple of good hits to the face, not to mention the pile of debris that had thrown him back into a wall, and he could feel it in every fiber of his body. Of his being, a kind of psychic strain that dragged at his mind. The Force was lying quiescent now, but earlier –

The Force hadn’t been this active around him for years, not until they had arrived on Lothal three days ago. He didn’t like it and he didn’t want it and all it would take would be for the Crucible to send just one more Inquisitor here to check up on him for it to be made terribly clear. Anyone Force-trained had to be able to tell.

He had to get it under control. Had to, even though – most trainees who came into the Crucible were untrained, what the Order had called feral Force-users. They had taught themselves how to use the Force in a hundred tiny ways that were mostly extensions of natural abilities – enough foresight to win at sabacc or death dice, a leap that few meters further than was possible for their species, a mind trick that would coax taxi drivers to forego their fares. The trainers at the Crucible had to teach them how to use their powers, to be consciously aware of what they were doing and to pillage the Force to the extent of their capability. The Inquisition considered the Force a tool, a combination of a wild creature to be tamed and brought to heel and an elemental addiction that dragged its users deeper and deeper into an addiction from which there was no escape. It was a sacrifice they were willing to make.

It was a way of thinking that would have been utterly alien to the Jedi Order – not just alien, but verging dangerously close to blasphemous. Caleb Dume probably would have been equal parts fascinated and horrified. Kanan Jarrus had just been horrified.

The Jedi knew that there was no getting the Force under control.

He put his hands over his face again, breathing hard against his cupped palms. For a moment he could feel all the parts of himself dragging at him – Jedi, Inquisitor, Caleb Dume, Kanan Jarrus, the nameless child who had run with Janus Kasmir all those years ago.

_Run, Jedi._

He was trembling with the need to do just that, the old instinct that he had thought he had had beaten out of him in the Crucible. If he ran, they would kill his team. He couldn’t live with that. He could live with everything else, but not that, and they didn’t deserve it. The only place left for him to run was back to Mustafar, and he couldn’t – he wouldn’t –

Easy to run back to the Crucible, to let the last shreds of himself burn away in the flames, to be the Hunter’s cherished prize, his pet killer. He had done it before. He could do it again. He could go back to Mustafar, to the Crucible, and then Hera and Zeb and Sabine would be _safe_ , back beneath the ISB’s wing and safely away from the Inquisition. They would be safe, and he would be no one, and – 

And the Hunter was dead.

And Hera would come after him.

He pushed his hands back into his hair, the thick strands a shock to his bare fingers, the way they still sometimes were. He had been shaved bald when he was at the Crucible, just one more of a thousand indignities that even half a decade later still cropped up to torment him.

Nowhere to run. Nowhere to hide. And a failure to take to his masters, a failure he didn’t know how to justify without admitting to his own weakness. Weakness that was always met with punishment. And this – this they would kill him for, or at least make him wish that they had.

He rubbed his hands over his face again, conscious of the murmur in the Force as the city began slowly to wake up around him. Although still dark, the sky had taken on a slightly lighter tint; it wouldn’t be long before there were people in the streets again, since curfew or not, life on Lothal had to go on. If the Empire hadn’t caught the insurgents by now, then it wouldn’t catch them at all; there was a good chance that they had already left the planet during last night’s chaos.

He could have reached out into the Force, searching for the Togruta’s Force-signature, but he knew that there was a good chance that she could conceal it just as well as he could, and he – and he didn’t want to open himself up to the Force that much. Not after last night. Not ever.

He couldn’t stay out here forever, he knew, and made himself start walking towards the Imperial Complex again. He reached it just as the side came up over the rolling plains to the east of the city, walking past the blackened but no longer burning wreckage of the parade vehicles, most of which still hadn’t been cleared away. The stormtrooper guard on the gate was heavier than usual, and they eyed him askance as he approached.

“Who are you supposed to be?” one of them demanded, ignoring the urgent gestures some of the others were making; apparently _they_ remembered that there was an Inquisitor onworld.

He didn’t have the energy for this, so he pulled his lightsaber off his belt and ignited it, making a few of the stormtroopers flinch back. “The Emperor’s hand,” he said. “Move.”

They moved.

He deactivated his lightsaber and went in past the gates. The Force told him without being prompted where Hera was, and he followed it into the headquarters building, into a command center that looked almost identical to every other Imperial command center he had seen. He saw Hera immediately, flanked by Sabine and Zeb, and the sight was enough to make a little of the tension inside him ease off. All three of them looked tired, but they seemed unharmed, which was more than could be said for him.

He stood still in the doorway for a few seconds, until Sabine glanced up and saw him. Her mouth opened slightly, then she nudged Hera. Hera looked at her instead of up, then followed the direction she indicated with a jerk of her chin.

He saw her lips shape his name before she remembered that she wasn’t supposed to use it, then she came around the side of the holotable towards him. Minister Tua, who had apparently never bothered to replace her hat after losing it during the explosion, said in a nervous flutter, “Inquisitor! Where have you –”

She let the words trail off as Hera reached him. He saw her fingers twitch, as though wanting to reach for him, but all she said was, “You’re hurt.”

He shook his head, then remembered that he should probably say something too. “Scratch,” he said, then frowned and licked his lips before saying more clearly, “It’s just a scratch.”

Hera’s brows furrowed, catching the slip.

He fisted a hand in frustration. This time he made himself think through the words before saying them, knowing he didn’t want to do this in front of witnesses. “We’ve got a problem,” Kanan finally said. His voice came out rough and lower than usual, but at least he hadn’t stumbled over the words this time. Some days Kanan thought he could happily toss the entire Crucible into the lava on Mustafar, if only for this. “We need to talk.”

Hera nodded.

“If this has to do with the terrorist attack last night –” Commandant Aresko began.

Kanan glanced up at him over Hera’s head, and whatever was in his eyes must have been enough, because Aresko went even more corpse-like than usual and stopped mid-sentence, looking hastily aside.

“Let’s go somewhere else,” Hera said. She touched the back of Kanan’s hand, her touch light and glancing and concealed from the rest of the room by the way she was standing, then added over her shoulder, “Zeb, could you get a medkit?”

He nodded, but Hera was already steering Kanan out of the command center. She found an empty office – Lothal’s Imperial Complex was apparently understaffed for its size – and closed the door behind them. Kanan slumped back against the desk, rubbing his hands over his bruised face and grimacing.

“I hope the other guy looks worse than you do,” Hera said, reaching for the buckle on his armor.

“Not…really,” Kanan said. He let her slip his pauldron off, shifting when she indicated it. She set the pieces of his armor aside on the desk beside him and Kanan stared at them blankly for a moment, too exhausted to think about anything.

He looked up as Hera cupped his cheek in her hand, her fingers careful around the bruises and scrapes. “Kanan,” she said. “Are you hurt anywhere else?”

He shook his head. “It looks worse than it is.”

“What happened?”

Kanan rubbed the back of his hand over his mouth and winced again. “We’ve got a problem.”

“You said that already.”

They both looked up as the door slid open and Zeb and Sabine came in, Zeb carrying a medkit and Chopper rolling along behind them. “What happened?” Sabine demanded. “Are you all right?”

Kanan made himself straighten up, abused muscles protesting now that they were actually being asked to work again after that moment of rest. “It looks worse than it is.”

“It looks like you got the poodoo kicked out of you,” Zeb said. He put the medkit down on the desk next to Kanan, standing back as Hera leaned over it.

Kanan shrugged. “Well, you’re not wrong.”

“The boy?” Hera asked doubtfully, unscrewing a jar of bacta cream. Kanan turned his face to one side as she rubbed it onto one of the cuts on his cheek.

“No. There was –” He hesitated for a long moment, wondering if he wanted to take this final step. “You ever find the Rodian?”

“His implant popped back up on the surveillance satellite surveys for a few minutes, then went cold again,” Sabine said. She crossed her arms over her chest. “He’s not the one who beat you up –”

“No.” Kanan ran the side of his thumb over his lip, wincing as he reopened one of the tiny cuts there. Licking the blood away, he looked at Hera and said, “Fulcrum was here.”

She went still, the jar of bacta forgotten in her hands. “You’re certain?”

He made a vague gesture in the direction of his face. “Fairly.”

“Wait,” Zeb said. “I thought Fulcrum was a group, one of those rebel cells like Free Ryloth or –”

“Free Ryloth isn’t a cell,” Hera said sharply. “It’s independent, it’s not associated with any of the other known terrorist associations.”

Something about her tone made Kanan frown at her; she avoided his gaze and looked down, fumbling with the bacta jar. He knew that her clan had been heavily involved with the group back on Ryloth, but she had told him that she had completely cut ties after she had been recruited by the ISB. She hadn’t been telling him everything, but that was hardly a surprise and Kanan didn’t blame her for it; it wasn’t as though he had told her everything either, and both of them knew better than to ask.

“I don’t think I’ve heard of Fulcrum before,” Sabine said, her gaze skating over to Hera and then back to Kanan.

Hera put the bacta jar down on the desk next to Kanan and said, “It’s the name of a terrorist group that’s been active across the galaxy, though mostly in the Outer Rim. The Bureau’s been trying to track them for the better part of a decade, though we’ve never been able to identify any of the members.”

“Yeah, that’s because Fulcrum’s not a group, it’s just one person,” Kanan said. He rubbed at his face, getting bacta across the side of his glove, and wiped it off on his trousers. “Did the task force know that?” he asked Hera.

“Not that I know of, but it’s not as though Agent Kallus and I are friendly.” Hera’s mouth went tight. Kanan didn’t know the name, but that didn’t mean much; Kallus could have been any one of a hundred faceless ISB agents he had met over the six years he had been with Hera, if they had ever crossed paths at all. “Did you see him?”

Kanan ran his tongue over his teeth and reached up to run his hand through his hair, his fingers bumping up against the tie of his ponytail. “I didn’t get a good enough look at _her_ to pick her out of a lineup. Togruta, that’s about all I got. I didn’t see her markings.”

“Well, that’s more than we had yesterday, at least.” Hera started to turn away, shaking her head, then looked back at him. “The Rodian?”

Kanan nodded. “They had him. I saw – three, maybe four Twi’leks, another Rodian, but it was too dark to make out any features. So she’s working with someone.”

He was tired, but he wasn’t so tired that he didn’t notice Zeb and Sabine both looking at Hera, who dropped her gaze.

“All right,” she said without looking at him. “I’ll contact Naboo as soon as it’s morning over there. They’ll want to know this.” She took a deep breath, then picked up the bacta jar again.

“So one Togruta woman kicked the hell out of you?” Zeb said to Kanan, his ears twitching in surprise.

“It’s complicated,” Kanan said.

Chopper made a noise that sounded suspiciously like a snicker and Kanan said, “Yeah, yeah, I know.”

Hera caught his sideways glance at her and nodded a little, turning to the others. “Give us a minute?”

“What should we tell the locals?” Sabine asked.

“Tell them the ISB will handle it,” Hera said.

“Well, _that’s_ encouraging,” Zeb muttered, and Sabine elbowed him.

“You work for the ISB, remember?”

“I try not to.”

They were still bickering when the door slid shut behind them and Chopper, leaving Hera and Kanan alone in the room.

Hera turned the bacta jar over in her hands and leaned her hip against the side of the desk, looking at Kanan with concern. “Something else happened. The boy?”

Kanan didn’t want to think about the boy. He ran his hands through his hair again, dislodging the tie this time, and made himself look at Hera. “Fulcrum’s a Force-user,” he said. “Jedi-trained.”

Her eyes went wide. “Like you?”

“Yeah. I wasn’t expecting it; I got lucky.” Kanan pushed the heel of one hand against the knee of his trousers, studying the way his tabards fell across his thighs. “It could have been bad.”

Hera covered his hand with hers, and he looked up at her. “Do you know who she is, Kanan?”

“I –” He swallowed. “I can guess, but I’m not sure. I don’t think I ever met her, and I’m not –” _I’m not taking that to the Crucible if I’m not sure._

“If she’s a Jedi, then the Inquisition will take the Fulcrum op away from the ISB,” Hera said. “That op has been ours for ten years, Kanan. If Fulcrum is a Jedi, then that changes everything. There’s no way we’ll be allowed to keep it, rebel or not. You know how the Crucible is.”

Yeah, Kanan knew how the Crucible was, better than almost anyone else in the galaxy. He pinched the bridge of his nose between two fingers and let out a slow, unsteady breath. At last, he said, “I’m not going to tell the Crucible.”

Hera’s grip tightened on his. “What?”

He looked up at her. “I can’t turn another Jedi over to the Crucible, Hera. I can’t do it. I won’t. They’ll kill me for it, but I can’t do it.”

“Kanan, she’s a terrorist –”

He shook his head, unable to find the words for a moment, then said, “If the ISB catches her, that’s – I’m not going to be the one to hand her over to the Crucible. I –” He looked away, not willing to meet her eyes. “I thought I was the last.”

She touched his cheek, and he looked up at her. After a moment she nodded. “All right. I won’t tell Agent Beneke. But if he finds out –”

“Yeah, I know,” Kanan said. “He’ll jump at the excuse to get the Crucible to have me drawn and quartered.”

“Only if they find out that you didn’t report it in.”

He nodded, and she leaned in to press her forehead against his. Kanan curled his fingers around hers and breathed in, trying not to think at all.

“There’s one other problem,” he said.

“Just one?”

She was so close he could feel her breath against his face. All Kanan wanted to do was lose himself in her, forget about all this for a few hours, but –

“Yeah,” he said. “She knows my name.”

*

By the time the shuttle met up with Fulcrum’s other rebel friends, Zabo was awake; Doriah was seriously considering knocking him out again just to get some peace. Numa and Edeleh eventually hauled him off for a meet and greet with some of the crew on the ship they were docked with, which at least got him out of Doriah’s lekku and lowered the chances that they would start swinging at each other again.

Doriah slumped back in his seat, his eyes closed as he stretched his legs out. There had only been two things repeating in his mind for the past few hours, ever since they had left Lothal in the narrow window the Imperial blockade had reluctantly opened for offworld commuter shuttles. They were chasing each other in restless circles, driving him mad with it; he hadn’t been able to think past them and had been answering the uncertain queries of the others in monosyllables. Getting everyone else off the shuttle had been a relief.

“Doriah?”

While it lasted, anyway.

He opened his eyes to see Kaylani standing in front of him. Her expression was concerned, her hands shoved into the pockets of her jacket, but twitching nervously nevertheless. “Can we talk?”

Doriah pushed himself upright, rubbing a hand over his face. “Yeah. What is it?”

Kaylani sat down next to him without being asked, her hands still in her pockets – Doriah knew her well enough to guess that she was trying to avoid showing him how nervous she was. They weren’t close, but they were about the same age and this wasn’t the first time they had been on an op together before. He had the feeling that she tended to volunteer for the same reason he did, to prove to herself that she belonged with the fleet.

“It’s about Tseebo,” she said, then clarified quickly, “The Rodian from Lothal, the Imperial data tech.”

Doriah’s memory wasn’t that bad. “Yeah, I know. What about him?”

“Shouldn’t we take him back to the fleet?” she asked. “These people – we don’t know them. We don’t know that they’re going to treat him any better than the Empire did.”

Doriah rubbed at his face again, trying to get himself to concentrate on what Kaylani was saying, since it seemed like it was probably important. “So?”

“So – shouldn’t we take him back to the fleet?” Kaylani repeated. “Whatever’s in his head, in his implant, we’ve got techs and slicers back on the _Forlorn Hope_ that can get into it just as well as anyone they’ve got here. Maybe better. And we found him, not these people. We should be the ones to take care of him.”

“And do what?” Doriah said. “We’re not going to use the information he downloaded. I’d like to, the gods know Cham would like to, but even if we crack the encryption that data’s not going to do much more than sit in our computers. Free Ryloth’s not exactly Free Ryloth anymore, in case you hadn’t noticed.”

The fleet was a world in exile, not the liberation movement Cham Syndulla had originally meant it to be. The more civilians flocked to the fleet, the further away it got from what it was supposed to be. Free Ryloth didn’t fight the Empire anymore; it just ran from it.

“You don’t know that!” Kaylani said. “And even if we don’t – at least I’d – we would – know that Tseebo is being taken care of, that he’s with people who have his own best interests at heart. If we leave him here we don’t know that. And I’m not saying that just because I’m a Rodian too.”

Doriah blinked. “What?” he said blankly. “What does that have to do with anything?”

Kaylani’s antennae twitched in a gesture that Doriah knew meant embarrassment. She glanced aside, blinking huge galaxy-filled eyes, then set her jaw as she looked back at him.

“I’m not a Twi’lek, Doriah.”

“Yeah,” Doriah said slowly, staring at her. “I’ve noticed. Why’s that important?”

“I’m not a Twi’lek, but I was born on Ryloth, my parents were born on Ryloth, it’s my homeworld too.”

“I know,” Doriah said. “I’ve met your mother. I just don’t know what you’re getting at. Has someone said something to you about not belonging with the fleet? Because if they have –”

“I can fight my own battles,” Kaylani said, her shoulders going tight. “I just – I want you to understand that I’m not saying this out of sentiment, or something. I’d say it if Tseebo was a Twi’lek, or a Wookiee, or a – a human, for that matter.”

“Right.” Doriah pressed his palms together in front of his face and tipped his forehead down against his fingers, trying to draw his scattered thoughts together. It was hard to think about some Rodian who couldn’t even hold a conversation when the only thing running through Doriah’s mind, repeating itself ad infinitum, was Hera’s distraught face and razor-creased Imperial grays. This was insane; Hera was a Twi’lek, a Syndulla, and she shouldn’t be with the Empire.

He dropped his hands back to his knees and made himself sit up. “Okay,” he said. “I get where you’re coming from, Kay. You’re right, we don’t know these people, but Cham’s heard of them before – sort of – and Fulcrum knows them.”

“We don’t know anything about Fulcrum,” Kaylani said doubtfully.

“We know that she’s no friend of the Empire,” Doriah said. “And she’s got contacts that we don’t, people who can help Tseebo and get him the help that he needs. Maybe get that thing off – out of – his head. We wouldn’t be able to do that back in the fleet; he’d probably end up lobotomized if we tried.”

“Doctor Themarsa –”

“– isn’t a neurologist, and he’s better than any of the other doctors in the fleet when it comes to non-Twi’lek biology, but that’s not really saying much.”

Kaylani glanced down, nodding. “Yeah.”

“He’d probably be better off with us than he would be with the Empire, but he needs help that we can’t give him. Cham doesn’t have the contacts to find a Rodian specialist, not without setting off alarms that might bring the Empire down on the fleet – if just having him there doesn’t do it; who knows what kind of signals that thing on his head is sending out?” Doriah fingered the end of one of his lekku. “We don’t know what the implants can do, and just because the Empire hasn’t shown up yet doesn’t mean they’re not going to. The fleet’s full of civilians, kids. These people – Phoenix Squadron – they’re all combatants. If the Empire does follow him here, then they’re better equipped to deal with it than we are.”

Kaylani nodded again. She took her hands out of her pocket and twisted them together in her lap. “But they could mistreat him,” she said. “Or just use him – strip his brain and then space him, or something.”

“Yeah, they could,” Doriah said. “We don’t know that they won’t. But sometimes you just have to trust people.”

She looked away, blinking again. “Syndulla vouched for them?”

“Well, I’ve heard him mention Phoenix Squadron before,” Doriah admitted. He’d thought about contacting the _Forlorn Hope_ , but the shuttle wasn’t hyperwave-capable and even if it had been, comming the fleet while Tseebo was onboard ran the risk of the Empire tracing the signal. Besides that, Doriah wasn’t certain right now if he could say two words to his uncle without yelling.

Kaylani made an uncertain gesture. “Okay,” she said finally. “I don’t trust them, but I trust you, and I trust Syndulla.” She stood up and shoved her hands back into her pockets. “Thanks, Doriah.”

“You’re welcome.” As she started towards the door, he added, “Hey, Kaylani?”

She looked back. “Yeah?”

“I’ve never said anything that makes you feel like I think less of you for not being a Twi’lek, have I? Or that you’re not a real Rylothean?”

“No, Doriah,” Kaylani said gravely. “You haven’t.” She hesitated, then said, “What Zabo said to you, back on Lothal? That was wrong. He shouldn’t have said that.”

“It’s not the first time I’ve heard it,” Doriah said. “But thanks.”

Kaylani stepped out of the shuttle as Fulcrum came in past her. The Togruta glanced after her, then turned to Doriah. “Commander Sato would like to speak with you,” she said, a slight lisp to the words from her injured lip.

“Me?” Doriah said, startled. “Why?”

“General Syndulla isn’t available.”

“I’m not his heir,” Doriah snapped, not making any move to get up. “That’s my cousin.”

Fulcrum gave him a thoughtful look, or at least as much as she could manage with one eye swollen shut and her face badly bruised from the fight, but all she said was, “Commander Sato has a proposition for General Syndulla and he would prefer to have it delivered verbally; recordings aren’t always secure.”

“Why can’t you do it?”

“Commander Sato believes that it might be received more favorably coming from another Syndulla.”

Doriah rubbed at his face. “Why, are you fighting?”

Fulcrum sighed. “Will you come speak to him?”

He let the question stand in the air between them for the better part of a minute before he conceded, “Fine,” and pushed to his feet. “Just because I say it doesn’t mean Cham’s going to listen, though; he doesn’t exactly take advice from me.”

*

For the first time that Cham could remember in the nearly fifty years of their acquaintance, Secchun Fenn answered his comm immediately.

 _Oh, genius of my ancestors protect me_ , he thought with a sinking stomach as her calm, still-beautiful visage shimmered into existence in front of him. _She must have really wanted that marriage alliance._

 _“Syndulla,”_ she said calmly. _“Have you considered my proposal?”_

“I have,” Cham said.

 _“And?”_ Secchun tilted her head slightly to one side, lekku swaying with the motion. She was wearing a shirt cut to show off her markings, so that no one familiar with Rylothean patrician markings could look at her and have any doubt about her caste and position in her clan.

“I’m afraid I have to refuse,” Cham said.

Secchun narrowed her eyes slightly, her mouth tightening. _“Why?”_

“Xiaan is not amenable to a marriage at this time,” Cham said. “Especially to someone she’s never met.”

 _“You let the_ girl _decide?”_ Secchun said, her pale eyebrows going up. _“Syndulla, this is hardly the sort of affair that should be left up to a child who doesn’t know any better. You understand the importance of this alliance to the fleet –”_

“This is not Ryloth.”

 _“Do you think that I do not know that?”_ Her long white hands flexed, the elaborate geometric black tattoos covering the backs and fingers up to the first knuckle shifting with the motion. _“Our traditions matter no less because we no longer have a homeworld, Syndulla. They matter all the more for it. If we allow them to slip away –”_

“Xiaan doesn’t want to marry your son, Fenn. That’s all you need to know.”

 _“The girl doesn’t want that?”_ Secchun said. _“Or you don’t?”_

Cham passed a hand over his face, knowing that Secchun would take it as a sign of weakness and not caring. Secchun Fenn had formed her opinion of him a long time ago; she wasn’t about to change her mind now. “Xiaan spent four years as a slave in the Empire,” he said flatly. “Do you think she would ever consent to be bartered off, no matter what the circumstances?”

Secchun blinked once. _“They have nothing in common!”_ she said sharply. _“How dare you –”_

“Xiaan’s made up her mind, Secchun,” Cham said. “If you’re so desperate to find a wife for your son, I’m afraid you’ll have to settle for someone other than a curiate.” He slapped the holoprojector to turn it off before Secchun could answer and slumped back in his chair, running a hand over his chin.

“That went better than I expected,” Alecto said from behind him.

Cham didn’t look up, though he started a little when she laid her hand on his shoulder. He wasn’t certain of the last time she had touched him with something resembling affection. “Well, I think I’ve just about torpedoed that relationship.”

“I don’t see a loss.” Alecto’s touch lingered for a moment before she pulled away, walking around his chair to pull herself up onto his desk beside the holoprojector.

Cham pressed his fingers against his forehead. “Expect one. Secchun won’t forget this.”

Alecto folded her hands around the edge of the table and leaned forward. “What can she do, anyway? She has a few ships, but this fleet is yours.”

“The Fenns control or influence more than a few ships,” Cham said. “Though that’s not what I’m concerned about.” He straightened up, giving up on trying to massage his incipient headache away. “Where _is_ Xiaan?”

Alecto frowned, though for once it wasn’t aimed at him. “She locked herself in her cabin and won’t come out. Sinthya and Teah and I have all tried, but she isn’t answering the door. It hasn’t been long enough yet that I want to force it,” she added.

Cham shut his eyes. “I should not have told her. I should have guessed that she would react like this.”

Xiaan, who at ten had screamed and screamed when they had tried to separate her from Doriah upon their return to the fleet, even though the two of them were only going to be a wall apart in the medbay. Who still shared a room with Doriah six years later. Who, the only time one of the other teenagers on the _Forlorn Hope_ had tried to court her, had frozen in agonized terror that Cham had seen from across the room, and then fled at the first opportunity. She hadn’t come out of her room for two days that time.

“Xiaan’s old enough to make her own decisions,” Alecto said, surprising him.

Cham glanced up at her, and she shrugged, self-conscious. “Better that she know now than have it sprung on her with no warning. She’s had more than enough of other people telling her what she can and can’t do. Taking away her right to refuse or accept isn’t any better than going through with the blasted thing in the first place.”

Cham sighed. He leaned an elbow on the arm of his chair, rubbing at his forehead again. “I wish this wasn’t happening now.”

“Mmm. Well, Secchun Fenn’s timing was never good.”

Cham raised his brows. “I think she’s said the same thing about you before.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, my timing is perfect,” Alecto said. “If you’d never met me you would have married her.”

Cham shuddered.

Alecto reached behind herself, picking something up off the mess that was his desk. It was the datapad that Ahsoka had given them what seemed like ages ago, though in reality it hadn’t been much more than a week. There hadn’t been much information on it in the first place, all of it limited to Hera’s time at the Imperial detainment facility on Stygeon Prime. They had already seen the last of the holos days ago.

Alecto looked down at the datapad, then rested it on her knees. For a moment Cham thought she was going to speak, but all she did was shake her head a little.

Cham looked aside. “Doriah will be back soon,” he said. “Xiaan will be all right then.”

Alecto ran long green fingers over the datapad, then met his eyes. “It’s not Xiaan I’m worried about,” she said.

*

Flower’s lekku slid forward over her shoulders to frame her face as she flattened her palms on the hardwood floor in front of her and leaned down until she could rest her forearms on the floor, the line of her torso perpendicular to her spread legs. She held the pose, letting her breath out slowly as she counted in her head, and glanced up to see the Blue Opal staring at her with wide eyes.

“How can you _do_ that?” the girl blurted out.

Flower straightened up and pulled her legs back from the splits, pressing them together in front of herself and leaning down again to stretch her fingers out towards her toes. “Practice,” she said. “A lot of it.”

“Can you teach me?”

“Maybe.” Flower held her stretch for a ten count, then straightened slowly up, feeling something in her back pop. “How flexible are you normally?”

Opal flushed purple. “I’m all right, I guess.”

“Twi’leks have a few more joints than most near-human species, so it’s easier for us,” Flower said. “I don’t know if Pantorans do or not, and you’re a little old to learn now if you haven’t before.”

She held her hand out, and the Blue Opal came over to pull her upright, grunting a little with the effort as Flower went mostly limp and made her put real strength into it. Opal didn’t fall over, so that was a good sign; Flower was thin, but it was mostly muscle.

Opal let go of her and tucked her hands behind her back as Flower looked her over. It had only been a few days since she had arrived at the Lake House, but she didn’t look much like that scared child anymore. Her hair had been cut back to her chin and it fluffed out in soft lilac curls around her face; combined with whatever the Jewel of Shili had done with her makeup that afternoon, it made her look older than her sixteen standard years and a little ethereal, other-worldly. Her ears had already been pierced when she had arrived at the House, but since then her nose had been pierced too, with a little silver ring set with her namesake gemstone in her left nostril. It matched the piercing in her navel, revealed by the top she was wearing, which was made of some kind of silk crepe and otherwise covered her from wrist to collar but left her midriff and most of her back bare, though it concealed her tattoo.

Her senator mother probably wouldn’t have recognized her, Flower thought. She doubted that her own mother would recognize _her_ , for that matter, but her mother had been dead for years and the rest of her family – however many of them still lived – was broken, scattered across the galaxy.

She flicked her chin to toss her lekku back over her shoulders and told Opal, “Sit. Spread your legs.”

“Um.”

“This won’t hurt,” Flower assured her.

Opal eyed her uncertainly, but didn’t protest. She sat down and did as she was told, resting her palms on the floor the way Flower had done, bare blue toes pointed at an angle that came nowhere close to Flower’s straight line, but still fairly respectable. Flower stepped up behind her and leaned down to rest her palms on the backs of Opal’s mostly bare shoulders, feeling the girl shiver at her touch.

She pressed down slowly but steadily, saying, “Tell me when it hurts.”

“I thought you said it wasn’t going to – now, now!”

Flower stopped, but didn’t release the pressure on Opal’s back. Opal had managed to lower her upper body to about a forty-five degree angle from the floor, which was more than Flower had expected for a sixteen-year-old girl who probably hadn’t had any dance or gymnastics training.

Opal’s breath whistled out through her teeth. “Can you let me up now?” she asked plaintively.

Flower took her hands off Opal’s back. “Slow,” she said, as Opal pushed herself up and then levered herself to her feet, wincing a little.

“You were nicer in bed,” she said accusingly.

“The bedroom and the dance floor are two very different things,” Flower said, “contrary to the opinions of some of my clients.”

Opal glanced at her and then blushed again, pushing her hands distractedly back through her short hair. “Am I going to have to –”

“Dance?” Flower said. “Most of the girls do. Mother wouldn’t have assigned you to me if she didn’t think you could do it.”

Flower had already known how, since it was a skill that Twi’lek girls of all castes were supposed to have. The only girl she had ever known who hated it – who tried to wriggle out of all their shared lessons and whom her mother or one of her aunts had had to fetch back from the airfield at the colony or the workshop on Ryloth every other day – had been her cousin Hera. Flower had never understood why Hera preferred to get her hands dirty messing around with airspeeders or racing pods when she could have been doing something beautiful instead.

Hera was probably dead now, or maybe in another House like this one, somewhere on the other side of the galaxy. It was hard for Flower to guess which was more likely; the Hera she had known would have hated this life.

Opal looked down, pressing the pad of one bare foot against the floor. “I don’t know if I can do it,” she said doubtfully.

“You’ll get used to it,” Flower said. She put a hand on Opal’s shoulder, making the girl look up at her. “And you won’t have to for a while, anyway. Mother prefers it if you’re actually good at it before you’re on the stage. By then you’ll be all right.”

Opal bit her lip, then blurted out, “How old are you?”

Flower blinked. “I’m twenty-three.”

“And – and how long –”

“Ten years,” Flower said. “I was thirteen. Younger than you.” She let go of Opal’s shoulder and crossed her arms over her chest, an instinctive gesture of protection. “I started at the House on Onderon; I was there for three years before I was transferred here to Naboo.” She hesitated, then added, “Only the White Shadow and the Splendor have been here as long as me. The others that were here when I started were all transferred. Or…” She let the final word trail off, not wanting to say _died_.

The Blue Opal looked down. Her voice little more than a whisper, she said, “I don’t want to be here for ten years.”

 _Neither did I_ , Flower thought. “I know,” she said. “I know, Opal.”

Opal rubbed her thumb against the inside of her opposite wrist, not meeting her eyes. “My mother –” she began haltingly.

Flower never heard the rest of the sentence, since the door to the practice room slid open, admitting the Jewel of Shili – a tall, graceful Togruta girl a few years younger than Flower, with green skin, long gold-striped lekku, and diamond-shaped facial markings on her cheeks and chin. She said, “You’ve got a client, Flower.”

Flower blinked in surprise; since Opal was tailing her, she was off the floor for the time being and was only expected to work by appointment, and her schedule was supposed to be clear tonight. “Who?”

“The rainbow lady.” Jewel ran her fingers over the embossed gold caps ringing the ends of her lekku. “She’s in the usual room.”

“Oh,” Flower said, startled. The woman that Jewel had called the rainbow lady was one of her regulars, though she didn’t come for sex, which made a nice change. Flower just hadn’t seen her recently; she had thought she was offworld. “All right. I need to change. Come on, Opal.”

Opal followed her out of the practice room, pushing her hair nervously back behind her ears with her hands. “Um, do I need to –”

“You need to come. You don’t need to do anything, just watch.” Flower chewed on her lip, distracted. Opal had been assigned to her as what the Houses called her “pillow girl” – she would come to all of Flower’s assignations as an observer or a helper, but no client would be allowed to touch her without being barred from the House. There was a loophole there that most clients eventually figured out – especially repeat clients that had dealt with pillow girls before – but it hadn’t come up with Opal yet, probably only because this would be her first. At least that wasn’t something Flower had to worry about with the rainbow lady. Opal’s presence would lead to another problem, though.

She ducked into the dressing room set aside for her use to change. All she had meant to do this evening was stretch and practice and test Opal’s abilities, so she wasn’t dressed to meet with a client. Opal followed her in, standing back against the door and running her hands through her hair again.

“Stop that,” Flower said absently, sorting through her clothes. Most of her old things were still in here; she and Opal were almost the same shade of blue, so at least she didn’t have to worry about any of her clothes clashing with Opal’s skin, which could be a concern with someone like Star or Jewel.

She pulled a skirt that would match the top Opal was already wearing off the rack and handed it to the girl, who took it automatically and then clutched the fabric to herself, her eyes wider than ever. “Put that on.”

“Do I –”

“Yes,” Flower said firmly. She found something that would work for the rainbow lady and pulled off her top, shimmying out of the tank top and thin leggings she was wearing to change into a clinging skirt which shimmered and changed colors as she moved and a matching wrap top that showed off both the curves of her breasts and the caste markings on her shoulders, upper arms, and small of her back. Not that anyone on Naboo knew what they meant, but Flower had found that many humans thought that they were attractive, a touch of the barbarian Outer Rim here in the midst of Imperial splendor. She fixed her makeup in the mirror as she slid a headband on over her lekku, the mother-of-pearl inlay catching the light in the small room.

When she turned back, she saw that Opal had changed, a little to Flower’s surprise, but the girl was still shivering. Flower suspected it had more to do with nerves than cold, since it was a nearly floor-length skirt split up the sides so that the wearer could move, and if Flower wasn’t cold, then Opal, with her hardier Pantoran constitution, couldn’t be.

Flower put a hand under Opal’s chin to make her look up. “It will be all right,” she said. “You don’t need to do anything, just stand there and hold a tray, maybe pour some nectar.”

“But you –”

“Not this time,” Flower said. “The rainbow lady doesn’t come for sex, she comes because I give a very good massage.”

Opal blinked, her shoulders drooping. “Oh.”

“Not everything we do is sex, Opal,” Flower said. She ran her fingers through Opal’s hair, ordering it. “Most of it is, but not everything.”

“But that doesn’t change what it is,” Opal blurted out. “We – we debated this at school. Not this specifically, but – hard labor for prisoners, that…that sort of thing. The Empire isn’t supposed to keep slaves –”

“The Empire does whatever it wants,” Flower told her. She lifted a hand to the back of her neck, where the collar of her top concealed the tattoo there, then let it drop. “Come on, sweetheart,” she said, putting an arm around Opal’s shoulders. “We are what we are, and we just have to live with it.”

*

Ezra spent the night in one of his hidey-holes around Capital City, curled up in a long-abandoned drainage system that no one ever ventured into, not even any of the gangs. He was able to sleep a little, mostly because he had learned a long time ago that he had to be able to sleep whenever he had the opportunity, since the next time might not be for a while. But he kept waking up, staring around in the thin darkness of the tunnel and expecting the red blaze of the Inquisitor’s lightsaber, and when he did sleep for more than a few minutes at a time he had strange, uneasy dreams that didn’t seem to make any sense.

When he finally left the tunnel he barely felt rested at all, rubbing a hand at eyes that felt simultaneously gummed up and dry. Everything seemed to have taken on a faintly unreal edge in the watery light of early dawn, Capital City blurring around him as he traced his way through familiar streets to the nearest of the local fences. There were still stormtroopers on most of the major streets – more than usual but fewer than there had been yesterday. Ezra didn’t know if the Imperials had caught Tseebo and the Twi’leks or whoever had bombed the parade, but he hoped not – maybe this was just increased security, the way they did whenever something happened on Lothal that they didn’t like.

At least he hadn’t lost his pack at any point during yesterday’s chaos, even when the Inquisitor had been chasing him. That meant that the day hadn’t been a total loss. He had the sinking feeling that any fence he tried would pay him less for yesterday’s haul than they might have done without the bucketheads crawling all over the city – thieves like Ezra would be trying to offload and fast, just in case they got picked up for looking funny at a crosswalk. It wouldn’t be the first time.

The nearest fence was Franke’s, over on Felder Street. Ezra headed in that direction in a meandering sort of way, careful not to walk too fast or do anything that might catch the attention of the stormtroopers patrolling the streets. Felder was just off one of the larger streets in this part of the city, a narrow near-alley that didn’t really deserve the name street. Ezra ducked into it, instantly blinking in the dark gloom that came from multi-story buildings on either side of him joined together by crisscrossing lines of hung laundry. On either side of him were narrow doors that led up to the upper stories and wider doors that opened onto the shops lining the street, all but one of which was still closed, given the hour.

Franke’s was almost dead-center at the middle of the block, a little pool of light in the gloom of the narrow street. Half-empty crates of fruit and vegetables were stacked precariously on either side of the door, each one tagged with a piece of flimsiplast advertising the price. The windows of the little shop were dirty, but light spilled out of the open door and illuminated the narrow shelves within. Ezra stepped inside, turning immediately towards the counter on his left, behind which a bored-looking Nautolan girl a few years older than him was paging slowly through her datapad. She hadn’t even glanced up at his arrival.

“Hey,” Ezra said, watching her turn large black eyes towards him, consider him, and dismiss him within the span of a few seconds. “I’m here to see Franke.”

Her gaze flickered up again. “Why?”

“Why does anyone ever want to see her?” Ezra said. “Tell her it’s Ezra Bridger. She knows me.”

The Nautolan stared at him for what felt like an eternity, then reached under the counter. Ezra knew that there was a button under there, something that would tell whoever was in the backroom that there was someone in the front that wanted to see them. He resisted the urge to shift on his feet as the Nautolan picked up her datapad again, though she was watching him over it.

After a few minutes of awkward silence, the door at the back of the shop – visible through the narrow shelves – slid open. The Nautolan looked at Ezra and jerked her chin towards it in a small motion; Ezra resisted the urge to finger his energy slingshot and went back. He and Franke had never had any problems. This was just nerves left over from the previous night.

The back door led into a short hallway that led to a stockroom on one side, an exit at the end, and a narrow stairwell lit by a few bobbing lumas. Ezra took the stairwell, climbing up to the second floor landing, where the door slid open as he approached, letting him into an undecorated living room packed with unwieldy piles of…stuff. There had to be at least twenty or thirty thousand credits worth of stuff just in this one room.

At the center of it was a folding card table with four chairs around it, only one of which was currently in use. The occupant was a purple-skinned Theelin woman whose red hair was arranged into a series of spikes that ran from the center of her forehead back along her skull. She looked up as Ezra came in, not even bothering to set down her mug of caf.

“Ezra Bridger,” she said. “I’m guessing you have a couple of banged-up parts pulled out of crashed TIEs and maybe a meiloorun fruit to sell me.”

Ezra slung his backpack off his shoulder and let it dangle from one hand. “Maybe next time, Franke, if you’re lucky. I’ve got some nice stuff, though.”

“Scared of getting picked up by our friends in white?” Franke said.

“Aren’t _you_ scared they’re going to come knocking one of these days?” Ezra said.

She flipped a hand. “We have an arrangement. Well, let’s see what junk you’ve brought me today and maybe I can drum up a few credits for whatever it is.”

Ezra dumped his backpack out on the table in front of her. Before he had come in, he had fixed a number in his head that was the absolute minimum he would accept without walking out to try another fence, but the truth was that Franke was probably going to be the most generous. Not that that was saying much.

Franke set down her mug to begin sorting through it with long purple fingers, utterly silent as she pushed items into one pile or another. Ezra shifted nervously back onto his heels, then forward again onto the balls of her feet, knowing that there was nothing he could do to make her go faster. He resisted the urge to glance behind him, half-expecting the Inquisitor to come crashing through the door.

Eventually Franke looked up and tapped a long nail absently against the tabletop. “I’ll give you fifty for the lot.”

“Fifty?” Ezra sputtered. “I was thinking more like a hundred.”

“But you’ll take the fifty,” Franke said. “You don’t want to be carrying a knapsack of stolen goods with half the stormtroopers on Lothal combing the city for the bomber who attacked the parade last night.”

Ezra set his jaw. “Ninety.”

“I might be convinced to go as high as fifty-five,” Franke allowed.

“You know, there are other fences in town,” Ezra pointed out. He could feel tension settling into his jaw; he had expected Franke’s first offer to be low, but not _that_ low.

“Oh, I know,” she said. “I also know that not one of them will go any higher than forty, not with the Imperials pouring over the city. Fifty-five, Ezra. Take it or leave it.”

“How about sixty?” he tried.

“How about fifty-five?”

“You’re usually better at this,” Ezra said grumpily, but he had to concede that fifty-five was probably the best offer he was going to get. He knew all the other fences, and Franke was right; all of them would start off lower, maybe a lot lower.

He took the fifty-five credits and slung his now-empty backpack over his shoulder, leaving Franke behind as he went back down the stairwell and out through the shop. The Nautolan girl didn’t even look up as he passed.

The market was already up and running when Ezra reached it, though there were stormtroopers every direction he looked. Conscious of the credits he was carrying and not wanting to do something that might draw attention, he bought a jogan and a meat-stuffed pastry at a stall, then sat down on the steps in front of the nearest doorway to eat the pastry. He wiped crumbs off on his trousers and stood up to go throw the wrapper away, taking a bite out of the jogan as he contemplated his options.

Leaving Capital City would be the smartest thing to do. There was nothing to be gained from hanging around, especially with stormtroopers everywhere. He should stay away until things cooled down – until the Inquisitor left – and spend his time in the tower or in the smaller outlying settlements. He didn’t steal there, obviously; it wasn’t as though there was much to steal there in the first place. But food was cheaper there than it was in Capital City, even if there were generally fewer options. And the Empire never really got out that far.

“Hey, kid. This is a restricted area.”

Ezra came to a halt, staring up at the stormtrooper he had almost walked into. He didn’t remember leaving the market, but he must have done, because he was standing in front of the Imperial Complex, near the caution tape that had been strung up around the wreckage of the vehicles that had been destroyed in the bombing last night.

“Uh,” he said, his mind going completely blank. He had no idea what he was doing here. “Sorry,” he added, taking a step back and scrambling for an explanation. “I just wanted to see –”

“Yeah, you and the rest of the city,” said the stormtrooper, not unkindly. “Not much to see. Get out of here, kid. Tell your friends.”

“Yeah, I’ll do that,” Ezra said, backing away.

He threw the jogan core away in the nearest trashcan and started back in the direction of his parents’ house, meaning to take his speeder bike and get the hell out of town. Why had he gone to the Imperial Complex, of all places? That was where the Inquisitor probably was, and Ezra wanted to stay as far away from _that_ guy as he possibly could. He still didn’t know why the Inquisitor had come chasing after him, but he did know that he didn’t want it to happen again. He didn’t even want to _see_ the guy again.

Except –

He had felt something. A connection. But that was impossible, because the galaxy didn’t work like that. Ezra was just imagining things. It wasn’t like he was anyone an Inquisitor would be interested in.

*

Hera found Kanan in his cabin, standing shirtless in the center of the room and looking around a little blankly, his hair still damp from his shower. He glanced up as she came in, smiling distractedly at her. The smile was a good sign. So was the fact that his armor and lightsaber were lying on his meditation cushion, not thrown haphazardly around the room. The cabin was still more disordered than usual, but at least it didn’t look like Kanan had come in and immediately tried to ruin everything in it. Hera supposed that that could just be because he was too exhausted after the past few days, but she hoped not. She didn’t think that either of them was in the mood to deal with that at the moment.

“Hey,” Kanan said, coming over to kiss her as Hera let the door slide shut behind her.

Hera tilted her head up to be kissed, closing her eyes and just breathing him in. He smelled like bacta and soap and human male and _Kanan_ , and it would be so easy to let this carry on to its natural conclusion and push him back towards his bunk, lose herself in him the way she wanted to so badly and had so many times before. She kissed him again, resting her hands against his bare chest, and Kanan looped an arm around her waist to pull her close.

“I was worried about you,” she breathed against his mouth, careful of his bruised lips. Fulcrum could have hit him somewhere other than his face, though given the bruises on his chest – at least one of which was distinctly boot-shaped – she hadn’t exactly been discriminating. “You should have called in.”

“Yeah. I’m sorry.”

Hera pressed a third kiss to his mouth, light and glancing this time, then made herself pull back. “I need to tell you something.”

Kanan frowned. “Naboo? I thought it was still night over there.”

“It is.” Hera played with the cuffs of her uniform jacket, suddenly unable to meet his eyes. “It’s not about Naboo.”

“Okay,” he said, his expression softening into concern. “What is it?”

Hera bit her lip and looked away, studying one of the dents in the wall, probably from Kanan throwing his armor or his lightsaber at it in some point in the past five years. After a moment she made herself look back at him. “I know who was with Fulcrum here on Lothal.”

“Okay,” he said again. “Who?”

Hera swallowed and looked down at the battered floor. “Free Ryloth.”

He blinked. “You’re sure?”

“Yeah.” Her voice caught and she glanced aside, swiping the side of her hand beneath her eyes. It came away wet, making her hiss in frustration.

“Hera,” Kanan said, reaching for her. He rested his hands on her shoulders, his touch impossibly gentle for someone to whom violence came so easily. That hadn’t been the Crucible, Hera knew. He had had that when she had met him on Gorse. She didn’t know if it was something unique to Kanan, or if it was something that all Jedi had. Had had.

“I don’t know why I’m crying,” she told him apologetically, and wiped at her face again.

“Hera, what happened?” Kanan asked, his voice soft, careful.

She bit her lip, shaking her head and feeling her lekku sway with the motion. “My cousin was there,” she said, and saw his eyes widen in surprise. “Doriah. I haven’t seen him since we were fourteen. Not since – since Zardossa Stix. He tried to get me to go with him. He didn’t know that I would be here, that I’m – what I am. An Imperial officer.” She lifted her hands helplessly. “I haven’t seen him since we were children, Kanan.”

“Are you all right?” Kanan asked her. “Did he – hurt you, or –”

Hera shook her head again. “No. No, he just – he’s like my father, Kanan, my father made him like him, and I don’t understand why – I’ve known for years that my father is still out there, stars know Agent Beneke has never let me forget it, but Doriah – I thought –” She scrubbed at her face again, letting Kanan guide her over to the meditation cushion. He swept his armor and lightsaber off it with a dull crash and sat her down, settling beside her as she curved a hand over his thigh, needing to feel him, needing something to ground herself in the universe.

“I don’t know what I thought,” she said dully. “I know that I was lucky to be recruited, but I don’t know what I thought happened to my cousins. I looked it up once – tried to – when I was at the ISB Academy, but it was all above my clearance level. And it was so much easier not to think about it. Except today – yesterday – and then Thyferra –”

“Thyferra?”

Hera looked at him, at his concerned face, and blurted out, “My father was the one who shot you. Or maybe my mother, she’s the better shot, but –”

Kanan blinked. “What?”

“I’m _sorry_ –”

“Hera, it’s fine, I’m fine, I’ve been shot by angry parents before, I just – why didn’t you tell me that your parents were on Thyferra?”

She just shook her head blankly. “I haven’t seen my father since I was thirteen. He’s one of the most wanted terrorists in the galaxy, but he’s still my father, and I didn’t – I didn’t know what to do. I should have told Agent Beneke. I should have told you.”

“It’s okay,” Kanan said, though he still looked a little surprised. He blinked again, his lips parted slightly and his brows drawn together, then he put an arm around Hera’s shoulders and kissed her forehead. She leaned against him as he said, “What do you want to do?”

“I don’t know,” Hera admitted miserably, immeasurably grateful for his unquestioning trust. “I don’t – if I tell Naboo, they’ll pull us out of the field, or at least pull me out, and there will be inquiries and if I’m lucky, I’ll end up flying a desk for the next five years. If I’m not lucky – if they think I was complicit –”

There was only one penalty in the Empire for treason, and Hera knew only too well what that was. Both of them did.

Kanan pressed a kiss to the top of her head, just at the base of one of her lekku, uncovered at the moment. “So don’t tell Naboo,” he said. “If you and I are the only ones who know –”

“Zeb and Sabine saw Doriah,” Hera said.

“They won’t tell if you ask them not to.”

Hera scrubbed her hands over her damp face. If she did this, there would be no way for her to come back. Ten years, and a nearly spotless record, and all of it would be gone, just because of her _parents_ –

“What does it makes us,” she said, “if I’m lying to Naboo and you’re lying to Mustafar?”

“I don’t know,” Kanan said. “I really don’t know. Probably not candidates for employee of the year.”

*

The Lake House wasn’t, technically speaking, a house at all. It was a complex of several buildings in what Flower had been told was the classic Naboo villa style – one of her clients had told her that it was styled exactly as a famous villa in the Lake Country was, the former vacation residence of a now dead Queen of Naboo. Flower had never been to the Lake Country, but she supposed it must be beautiful; even she could admit that the House was, depending on what part of it you happened to be in.

She led Opal through the back corridors, the hallways that the clients never saw. Opal had been in some of them, but hadn’t come this way before, and she kept looking around curiously, even though there wasn’t particularly much to see. Every now and then they passed a place where the wall was thinner, or stepped outside between buildings – narrow passageways mostly concealed by greenery and decorative walls – and heard a burst of sound from the club, the low murmur of laughter from the outdoor pool, a few breathy moans from one of the private gardens. Opal went more and more pale as they went, her blue face ashen in the moonlight, until Flower reached back and caught her hand.

“It’s all right,” she murmured to the girl. “You’ll get used to it.”

Opal looked like she was about to cry. She hadn’t been out of the back rooms since she had arrived at the House, not even during the day when the club was closed, and Flower supposed she should have taken the girl around at some point so that her first experience with the estate wasn’t while it was open. She could do that tomorrow, she supposed.

Flower drew Opal down the last corridor, indoors again now, and pressed her palm against the lock for the inner door. It slid silently open in response to her touch and she stepped into a small, undecorated room whose lights flickered on as they entered.

“Changing room,” Flower told Opal. “Massage oils are in this cupboard, here.” She opened it, considering the selection thoughtfully and running through her mental catalogue of the rainbow lady’s past choices before tipping a few down into a small basket. She found a polished silver tray and put the basket in one corner, then pointed to the cooler beneath the counter and said, “Nectar and wine are in there. Get me a bottle of each.”

Opal hurried to do so while Flower took two etched-glass cups in silver holders out of another cupboard, checked them over quickly for smudges, and put them on the tray as well. “Decanters are in there,” she said as Opal handed her the bottles. “One each.”

“Does it matter which?”

“Just as long as you can tell them apart.”

Opal put two cut-glass decanters on the counter beside Flower, watching as Flower poured out equal amounts of nectar and wine. Flower was about to put the bottles away, then changed her mind and fetched out a tasting cup. She splashed some wine into it and handed it to Opal.

“Drink that.”

“I’m not old enough,” Opal said, probably automatically; it was the same thing she had said yesterday.

“Sweetheart, I don’t think the legal drinking age on Pantora is your biggest problem right now.” Flower wasn’t trying to get her drunk, just to relax her a little, since at this rate Opal was so stiff that all Flower would have to do was poke her and she would collapse. The last thing Flower wanted her to do was drop the tray, though she supposed that would provide an excuse to send her out of the room.

Opal looked doubtfully at the cup, then took a sip, her painted mouth making a moue of disgust at the taste. She finished the cup as Flower put the bottles away, then looked around for a place to put the cup down, finally stepping over to set it down on the counter. She swayed a little as she did so, catching herself with one hand on the edge of the counter.

 _Maybe a little less wine next time_ , Flower thought. Or more, depending on who her next client happened to be.

She rifled quickly through the cupboards to see what else was stocked – it changed on a daily basis – and added a small bowl of cut fruit and a plate of sugared candies to the tray, arranging everything on it until it was both aesthetically pleasing and well-balanced when she picked it up experimentally. Opal watched her with wide eyes, still hanging onto the counter.

“Hold this,” Flower told her. “I’ll show you where to stand. Don’t do anything else unless I tell you to, all right? Me, not the client.”

“All right,” Opal said, her voice a little raw from the alcohol. She picked up the tray, watching as Flower checked herself quickly in the mirror on the back of the door. The rainbow lady wouldn’t care, but it wasn’t smart for Flower to let herself get out of the habit.

She touched the door control. The door slid open silently, revealing layers of gauzy multi-colored curtains that made Opal exclaim softly in wonder before Flower shot her a sharp look. She guided the girl out, through the open spaces between the curtains, until only one sheer curtain remained between her and the rest of the room, where Opal could clearly see the single big canopy bed, the small round tables, and the human woman standing by one of the windows, looking out at a small water garden that wasn’t accessible from any of the public areas of the house. 

The rainbow lady had been nicknamed that for her dyed hair; for all that the Naboo had elaborate hairstyles that Flower could appreciate, if not replicate, they seldom colored their hair, but the rainbow lady’s hair was a different color every time she came. She was in her early forties, with delicate features that belied the muscle Flower felt every time she gave her one of her massages. Though most of the Lake House’s clientele came from the Imperial Complex and the ISB Academy in Theed, the rainbow lady was one of a handful of native Naboo that came on rare occasion; all Flower knew was that she did something up at the palace for the current Queen.

The woman turned at their approach, arching one dark eyebrow beneath red and gold-dyed hair. “I don’t remember paying for two.”

“My new pillow girl,” Flower said, letting her accent thicken slightly, just enough to add an exotic lilt to the ends of her words and soften her consonants. “The Blue Opal of Pantora. She’ll just be watching.”

She took the tray from Opal, murmuring, “Put your hands either behind you or in front of you, but don’t fiddle with them,” and stepped out from behind the curtain, carrying the tray over to the nearest small table.

The rainbow lady turned to watch her, her gaze appreciative; if she hadn’t been carrying the tray Flower would have put a little more sway into her step, the type of movement meant to draw the eye to breasts and hips and lekku, but she had learned not to do that when carrying breakables a long time ago. She set the tray down and lifted the decanter of nectar, smiling. “Or would you prefer wine, my lady?

“Nectar will do,” the rainbow lady said, not moving from her position by the window. The sound of running water carried into the room from the water garden outside, from the fountain in the room itself; a constant on Naboo, but something that would have been a luxury on Flower’s native Ryloth. There had been a fountain in the family townhouse in Lessu, several of them at the villa, but otherwise she only remembered seeing water used as a decoration in the homes of other curial families, on the rare occasion she had been taken to visit them.

Flower poured nectar into both glasses, then capped the decanter and carried the glasses over to the window, handing one to the rainbow lady. She leaned in to kiss the other woman as she did so; the human put a hand up to cup the back of Flower’s head and draw her in, her touch light on the sensitive skin beneath Flower’s lekku.

“Send the child away,” she said against Flower’s mouth.

“I can’t,” Flower murmured back. “House rules.”

She felt the rainbow lady’s faint frown, but it was gone by the time Flower pulled back, taking a sip of her nectar. Under the sound of the running water, the rainbow lady said, “There was a fire in Riverside last night. I’m surprised that you didn’t hear the sirens from here.”

Flower’s mouth went dry. She took another sip of her nectar and said, “We’re not very near Riverside.”

“Mmm,” said the rainbow lady. She set her glass down on the windowsill and reached for Flower again, pulling her in for another kiss.

Flower kissed her back, then the edge of her jaw, reaching up to push the other woman’s brightly dyed hair back so that she could kiss her way down her neck. Her mouth against Flower’s ear-cone, the rainbow lady said, “Fulcrum wants information about something you told her five years ago. A Twi’lek ISB agent and a human Inquisitor.”

“I don’t really know anything about them,” Flower murmured. “They’ve never been in here. The ISB boys talk about her sometimes, but they’ve never even bothered to use her name. We’re all the same to them, you know that.”

“When did you hear about her first?”

Flower pulled back enough to take another sip of her nectar, then set the glass down on the windowsill beside the rainbow lady’s before leaning in again, reaching for the clasps on her overgown. “I think she must have started at the ISB Academy seven years ago, just about when I arrived here. The cadets come in here sometimes, especially after the half-year mark, when the Academy’s fairly certain they won’t wash out.”

She said the words against the rainbow lady’s neck, interspersing them with kisses. The other woman’s hands were on her lekku, playing with the ends the way that humans did because they were fascinated with them.

“The cadets then used to complain about her – she was top of the class, I think, and they didn’t like that some tailhead girl was better than them. She might have green skin, I think? One of my clients said something to me about it once, about how we’d look alike if not for that. She must have graduated because I didn’t hear about her for at least a year, maybe longer, and then she was back for some reason.” She frowned in thought, briefly distracted. “It was a long time ago, and I’m not sure, but – Darth Vader was here. On Naboo. It was all the boys could talk about for weeks, but none of them knew why.”

“Vader?”

Flower switched to the other side of her neck , pushing the other woman’s overgown off over her shoulders and down her arms. “I remember because I saw Vader once – not here, but when I was little, back when – it’s not important. I remember because he took my cousin.”

She started in on the front of the rainbow lady’s gown. “The Twi’lek was working out of Theed then, maybe for – six months? She never came in here, it’s just that the boys started complaining about her again. Mostly about how she had learned to enjoy a human man but still wouldn’t sleep with them, which I can’t really blame her for. Then she went away again, and the next I heard of her she was with that human Inquisitor on the Felucia operation, the big one I told Fulcrum about. That was a while ago, though. The only reason I remember at all is because she’s a Twi’lek too, and you know how the Empire feels about us.”

She got the clasps undone and the rainbow lady stepped out of the gown, leaving the layers of fabric on the floor. The human woman picked up the glass of nectar again, seemingly unconscious of the fact that she was only wearing her underthings, and took a sip.

“Well, that was lovely,” she said. She reached up with one hand to touch Flower’s face with her fingers. “Now, about that massage.”

*

Xiaan was already in the hangar when Cham and Mishaan Secura reached it, sitting cross-legged on a crate and staring determinedly at the magnetic shield as though willing the shuttle to appear. Alecto was standing by her, clearly trying to talk to her, but Xiaan seemed to be ignoring her, all her attention on the star-speckled blackness of space beyond the confines of the hangar. As far as Cham knew, she hadn’t said anything since she had run out of the _Razor’s Edge_.

Cham looked towards them, hesitating, before he realized that Mishaan was still speaking and looked back at her. “Sorry?”

Mishaan’s dark brows drew together. “I asked why it is that you’re trusting this Fulcrum with our people.”

“Fulcrum is beyond reproach,” Cham said, running a hand over his face; this wasn’t the first time they had had this discussion.

“We don’t know her –”

“ _I_ know her,” Cham began, but before he could say more the shuttle slid through the magnetic shield and settled down on the deck. On the other side of the hangar, Xiaan’s head went up and she straightened, slipping down off the crate to stand staring at the ship. Beside Cham, Mishaan’s jaw went tight as she crossed her arms over her chest.

The ship’s ramp unfolded, letting out the members of the Free Ryloth team that had gone with Fulcrum. Zabo, Cham saw, looked rather the worse for wear; he nodded at Cham and then strode past, rubbing at his jaw. Edeleh came out and went straight to his boyfriend, who was on the deck crew in one of the other hangars. Kaylani and Numa emerged together, Numa hanging back for a moment before following Kaylani down the steps.

Cham found himself leaning forward, unease making his lekku twitch; Doriah was usually the first one out, because he knew that Xiaan worried about him whenever he left. If he had been hurt, then the shuttle would have commed as soon as they had come out of hyperspace; the others wouldn’t have left so quickly.

A moment later Doriah emerged from the shuttle, his gaze going automatically to Xiaan before he saw Cham. He started in his direction, his boots treading heavily on the durasteel deck.

“Doriah,” Cham said. “How did it –”

He never saw Doriah’s punch coming.

The blow sent Cham staggering backwards, one hand going to his face. Out of the corner of his eye he saw blasters being drawn all over the hangar, but Doriah didn’t seem to notice, standing still with his fist raised and fire in his eyes.

There was blood on Cham’s fingers when he looked at them; he’d cut his lip on one of his sharpened teeth. “Doriah,” he began.

“That was for lying about Hera,” Doriah spat.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [neitherclosenorfar](http://neitherclosenorfar.tumblr.com/) drew a lovely [Secchun Fenn](http://neitherclosenorfar.tumblr.com/post/135311528777/secchun-fenn-from-bedlamsbard-on-the-edge-of-the)!
> 
> As ever, love and thanks to my beta Xena; this was one of those chapters where we were digging around in its innards for a while.
> 
> I do daily progress reports over on Tumblr, under the tag "[daily fic snippet](http://bedlamsbard.tumblr.com/tagged/daily-fic-snippet)," if you want to keep track of what I'm working on or get a hint of what's happening in the next chapter or two.


	11. Crucible

Everything in the hangar seemed to have frozen except for Doriah and Cham. Doriah heard his breath rasp out through his sharpened teeth, his fists clenched so tightly that his nails dug into his palms even through the leather of his fingerless gloves.

Cham looked at the blood on his fingertips, then up at Doriah. “You don’t know what you’re saying, Doriah,” he said.

“I know you lied about what happened to Hera,” Doriah spat. “I know you saw her when you were on Thyferra, and I know you left her there, in that abomination of a life –” He had to stop, rage briefly making it impossible for him to go on.

Cham’s orange eyes widened a little. It had been years since Doriah had seen Hera, and now he realized how much she looked like her father, how strongly the features of the Syndulla clan were stamped on her face. All you had to do was look at her to know that she was Cham Syndulla’s daughter. His only child. And he had left her there, left her to the Empire –

“This is not the place to have this conversation,” Cham said. He rubbed the blood on his fingers away and stepped forward, away from Mishaan Secura’s outstretched arm. “Doriah –”

Doriah raised his fist again, barely able to think of anything except Hera on Lothal, the way she had shouted at him, all that Imperial propaganda tripping easily off her tongue, the tears wetting her cheeks and the way she had fought against his hands when he had tried to make her see –

All of a sudden Xiaan was there, throwing herself between him and Cham.

Doriah pulled his blow as she flung her arms around his neck, saying, “Doriah, no, Doriah, you have to stop, _Doriah_ –” 

He put an arm automatically around her waist, bracing her as she buried her face against his shoulder. She was trembling violently, and for a moment everything else seemed to go away in the face of her distress. “Hey,” Doriah whispered to her, feeling his earlier fury scrape at his voice before he managed to gentle it. “Hey, what is it? Are you okay?”

Xiaan shook her head, still hanging onto him.

Doriah looked up over her head at Cham. There was a trickle of blood still coming from the corner of his uncle’s mouth, but his gaze was steady. “What did you do?” Doriah said through clenched teeth. He hadn’t seen Xiaan act like this in years.

“This is not the place to have this conversation,” Cham repeated. He glanced around the hangar and added with a note of irritation, “Put your weapons away, for love of the gods. This is a family matter.”

That didn’t necessarily preclude the use of weapons when it came to Twi’lek family squabbles, but Doriah didn’t feel a particularly compelling urge to point that out. He bent his head to Xiaan’s and cupped her face between his palms as she looked up at him. Her eyes were brimming with tears, and Doriah fought back another surge of anger.

“What?” he asked her. “What happened?”

She shook her head again and pressed her face against his shoulder, fisting her hands in the back of his shirt.

Doriah jumped as someone laid a hand on his shoulder, but it was just his aunt. “Doriah,” Alecto said. “Let’s not have this discussion here.”

He wrapped both arms around Xiaan, feeling her tremble against him. “You knew about Hera,” he couldn’t help saying. “She said you were there.”

Alecto went still. “You saw Hera?” she said. “You spoke to her?”

“Yes.” Doriah met her eyes. “You think I wouldn’t find out that my own cousin is an Imperial officer?”

He said the words too low to be heard by anyone else in the hangar, but Xiaan couldn’t miss them. Her head jerked up and she burst out, “Hera’s _what_?”

Alecto’s hand tightened on his shoulder. “Not here,” she repeated.

Doriah forced his breath out, hearing it whistle through his sharpened teeth. His jaw was clenched so tightly that it took him a moment before he could say, “Hera’s alive, Xi. And she’s not like…we were. That’s the important part.”

Xiaan looked up at him, searching his face with wide blue eyes. Whatever she saw must have convinced her, because she didn’t say anything, just leaned her head back against his shoulder and tightened her grip on him.

Doriah rubbed a hand over her back, then looked up at his aunt and uncle. “Fine,” he said. “Let’s talk.”

*

Ahsoka watched the Syndullas leave the hangar from the entrance to the shuttle, her arms crossed over her chest. She needed to speak with Cham about Caleb Dume – though she doubted it was anything that he actually wanted to hear – but he was clearly busy at the moment. At least everyone was looking after him and his family and not back at her, even though she had fairly effectively blown her cover with Free Ryloth when she had gone on this mission.

QT-KT had already left the shuttle for the _Aegis_ , parked a little ways away on the hangar floor and shut up during her absence. Ahsoka went down the ramp and crossed to her ship, garnering a few curious looks from Twi’leks who weren’t too busy whispering to their companions about what had just happened. If fleet gossip was anything like Jedi gossip, it would be all over the Free Ryloth fleet within a few hours. Ahsoka didn’t know if there was any cultural meaning that might be ascribed to Doriah Syndulla hitting his clan leader in front of witnesses, but if there was she doubted that he had been thinking about it at the time.

So Hera Syndulla had been on Lothal. She had guessed as much from Caleb Dume’s presence there – any Inquisitor privileged enough to be allowed a mistress probably didn’t go many places without her – but Ahsoka hadn’t expected that she would be anywhere that Doriah Syndulla might run into her. He hadn’t mentioned it on the way back from the rendezvous with Phoenix Squadron, which he had spent sitting by himself in a corner of the shuttle and ignoring his friends. Of course he wouldn’t have mentioned it to her; he barely knew her.

QT-KT met her at the entrance to the _Aegis_ , chirping an alert. “Incoming transmission?” Ahsoka said, quickening her pace and hitting the control to close the hatch behind her. “That was good timing.”

She settled down in front of the holotable in her tiny lounge, watching the hologram shimmer into existence in front of her. “Sorry about that –”

Sabé Ledoyen, former handmaiden to Padmé Amidala, looked back at her with tired eyes. _“I was about to leave a message.”_

“I was on an op, I’m sorry.” Ahsoka rubbed a hand over her face, then winced as she jarred her black eye. She could feel weariness dragging at her; it had been a busy few days.

Sabé’s eyes narrowed as she studied Ahsoka, presumably taking her bruised face and swollen lip into account. _“Are you all right?”_

“I’ve had worse,” Ahsoka said, waving it off. “Did you make contact with Siren?”

_“Yes.”_ Sabé reached up and tucked a loose strand of brightly-dyed hair behind her ear. Even fifteen years on and with an ever-changing rainbow of unnaturally colored hair, she still looked so much like Padmé that it made Ahsoka’s heart ache. Or as Padmé would have looked, if she had lived. _“She remembers hearing about a Twi’lek ISB agent and a human Inquisitor, but they never went to the Lake House. Not that I can blame them,”_ she added, her lip curling. _“I’ll transmit the encrypted recording.”_

A moment later QT-KT chirruped a confirmation that it had come through. Ahsoka leaned an elbow on the table and tipped her cheek against her fist, saying, “Is there anything else that’s not in there you can tell me?”

Sabé massaged her forehead. _“Just politics. Have you spoken to Bail or Mon lately?”_

“I’ve been busy. What’s happened?”

_“There was a big vote in the Senate two days ago – well, as big as anything gets these days. Our side had a slight majority, enough to veto it for another year. It passed by two votes.”_

“Well, that’s –” _Standard for the Empire_ , Ahsoka was about to say.

_“One of them was Pantora’s,”_ Sabé said. _“Corellia was always going to be a swing vote, but no one knows why Pantora suddenly reversed its position, and Senator Chuchi isn’t returning anyone’s comms. Senator Neeyutnee’s been going mad over it.”_

The former queen of Naboo had followed Padmé into the Senate, which Ahsoka had been grateful for; there had been a rumor that Palpatine was going to handpick the next senator for Naboo. Like Padmé, she had kept her regnal name, rather than resuming her family one after she had left office.

“Riyo?” Ahsoka said, startled. “Or has –”

_“Neeyutnee saw her in the Convocation Chamber and said she seemed well enough, at least from a distance. But –”_ Sabé made an indistinct gesture with one hand. _“I was hoping you’d heard something from your Imperial contact.”_

“I’ve been tied up with something else,” Ahsoka said apologetically.

For a moment she and Sabé just looked at each other, two relics of the old Republic trying to make their way as best they could in the Empire. Then Ahsoka sighed and said, “Have you ever heard of something called Project Nemesis? It’s probably run out of the ISB HQ on Naboo.”

Sabé thought about it for a moment, then shook her head. _“The name doesn’t sound familiar. Why?”_

“Something I’m looking into for a friend.”

_“I don’t know much about what the ISB gets up to,”_ Sabé said. There was a bitter note in her voice.

On most worlds, the Empire tore down existing structures and built blocky complexes that stood out from everything around them, a uniform, galaxy-wide reminder of the Emperor’s power. On Naboo, they hadn’t done so – maybe lingering affection on Palpatine’s part, maybe convenience, though Ahsoka wouldn’t bet on the latter. Instead, the Empire had taken over the Grand Courtyard, originally built in the aftermath of the Trade Federation occupation to commemorate the dead killed during the invasion. They had even renamed it the Amidala Memorial Courtyard, though no one called it anything other than the Imperial Complex, or, occasionally, the ISB Academy. It was certainly the most attractive one in the galaxy, Ahsoka supposed. It was visible from the palace; Sabé probably saw it every day.

Ahsoka stayed as far away from Coruscant as she could manage, but she had seen holos of the Jedi Temple – the Imperial Palace, now. She could have clawed Palpatine’s eyes out for that alone, let alone the atrocities he had committed. What the Empire had done to the Courtyard wasn’t much better.

“Is Siren’s situation stable?” Ahsoka said after a moment.

Sabé shrugged. _“As stable as it can be in a place like that. You know, I offered to smuggle her offworld years ago, but she refused. Her family was gone, her world was under the control of the Empire – it’s a hard thing, to not have anything. Easier to stay in captivity, even in a bad situation. I’m still not sure I did the right thing by letting her stay there, even if we’ve gotten useful intel out of it.”_

She shook her head, her mouth twisting. _“I went to see Padmé today, after I was done with Siren. Padmé always saw things so clearly. I used to think that that was a flaw, a weakness, but some days…some days it would be nice to have that clarity. Especially after a day like today. All that fighting, all that death – the occupation, the Clone Wars, and this is what we get for it. This is what Naboo gets for it. More death, more pain. And we’re the lucky ones.”_ Sabé rubbed a hand over her forehead. _“I’m sorry, Ahsoka. I’m just tired.”_

“It’s all right,” Ahsoka said, her own shoulders slumping. “I know the feeling.”

Sabé pushed both hands back through her red and gold dyed hair, disordering it. _“Is there anything else?”_

“I’ll be in touch,” Ahsoka said, shaking her head, then hesitated. “Keep an ear out for Riyo, will you? I can’t risk contacting her now.”

_“You know we’ve only met a few times,”_ Sabé pointed out. _“But I’ll do what I can.”_ She nodded gravely to Ahsoka; a moment later the hologram winked out as she cut the transmission.

Ahsoka slumped back in her seat. After a moment she made herself straighten up so that she could decrypt the recording Sabé had sent, listening with half her mind still on the dead. Siren’s voice was masked, the way it always was, and Ahsoka had to repeat the recording several times in order to sort out what she had heard.

None of it was anything that she hadn’t either learned already from Barriss or would have been able to guess, and Ahsoka fought down disappointment that Siren hadn’t known more. She wasn’t particularly surprised, but she had hoped – ah, well.

Ahsoka didn’t know who Siren was, and it was better that she not. The less they both knew about each other, the better. Ahsoka hadn’t been to Naboo since before the Clone Wars had ended, knowing that visiting the Emperor’s homeworld was a bad idea when there was still an open kill order on anyone associated with the Jedi Order. She had never seen the Lake House, but she had seen some of the Houses on other Imperial worlds, the brothels that catered solely for Imperial officers and officials and staffed by nonhuman courtesans. The Empire liked to keep an eye on those of its people who had what they considered deviant inclinations.

Utterly despicable, as far as Ahsoka was concerned. But very useful, especially for her purposes. Men liked to talk in bed; Imperials liked to brag to their lovers, especially when those lovers were the property of the Empire and apparently helpless. Siren wasn’t the only House girl or boy that had been recruited by Ahsoka or one of her contacts.

Ahsoka rubbed at her good eye and slumped back in her seat, exhausted and a little confused by the events of the past few days. Caleb Dume, she thought. The Inquisitor had been a bundle of contradictions in the Force, during the brief flashes when Ahsoka had been able to get a firm grasp on his signature. None of this made any sense.

*

“I just got off the comm with Naboo, and they said – what are you wearing?”

“Really?” Kanan said. “That’s what the ISB said? I thought we’d moved past this five years ago.”

“Not them, love,” Hera said, crossing her arms over her chest and leaning against the doorframe to admire the view. For all that Kanan didn’t wear his blacks if he could help it, it was always a shock to see him in civilian clothes – gray trousers, tight green jumper, and the green-painted pauldron he had been strapping on when she came into his cabin. “Are you going out?”

“Yeah.” He leaned down to pick up his thigh holster and slide it onto his belt, putting a foot up on his meditation cushion to do up the straps. “There’s something I need to do.”

“Is now really the time, dear?”

“We’re either about to be really busy or off this planet, so yeah, I think now’s about the only time.”

Hera advanced further into the room, letting the door slide shut behind her. Kanan straightened up, his gaze going serious as she said, “This is about the boy, isn’t it?”

“Hera…”

“Why is the boy so important to you?”

Kanan glanced aside, picking up his now seldom-used blaster and sliding it into the holster before reaching for his lightsaber. He turned it over in his hands, not meeting her eyes.

“Kanan,” Hera said again. “Who’s the boy?”

He hesitated, then said, “I don’t know.”

Hera stared at him, then said the first thing that came to mind. “You left in the middle of a terrorist attack to chase after some kid you don’t even _know_?”

Kanan opened his mouth to respond, grimaced, closed it, glanced away, and finally looked back at her to say, “I knew you had it under control.”

“No, I blasted well didn’t!” Hera said. “Doriah –” She gritted her teeth. “Kanan, why is some – what do they call it here, some Loth-rat – so important to you?”

“I –” He looked away again, shaking his head, then absently slapped his lightsaber against his palm. “I don’t know.”

“How can you _not know_?”

“Because that’s how the Force works!” Kanan said, then gritted his teeth. “I’m sorry. That was –” He shook his head again. “I don’t know why the boy’s important. That’s why I need to find him.”

“Fine,” Hera said. “Let me change and I’ll come –”

“No!”

Even he looked surprised by how violently he had spoken. Hera stood her ground, but her instinct had been to flinch back, and from the flush in Kanan’s cheeks he knew it. He glanced away, then looked back, gentling his voice as he said, “I need to do this myself.”

Hera stepped forward, laying a hand on his arm. “Do what?”

“I –” He closed his eyes, then let out his breath and opened them again. “I’m not sure yet.”

“That’s not very reassuring.”

“Yeah, well, I’m going back to the old me and winging it.” He grinned at her, but there was a shadow to it.

“Ah,” Hera said. “That explains the outfit.”

It wasn’t the same thing that he had been wearing when she had met him, but it was close enough that she could see the bones of the man he had been then. They had had undercover ops since he had come back from Mustafar, but he usually favored darker colors and he had never quite lost the rigid stiffness that was a legacy of his time in the Crucible. After four and a half years Hera was mostly accustomed to it, but sometimes it still took her by surprise – how much Kanan had lost at the Crucible, how much they had taken from him.

But there was something here that reminded her of the old Kanan, the gunslinger who had gone toe to toe with Count Vidian, who had traded barbs with every Imperial official on Gorse, who had leaned grinning at her over a cantina bar. Hera hadn’t seen that in a long time.

He turned that same grin on her now. “Well,” he said, “I guess if I finish up early enough I can go looking for one of the local gangs and we can relive our first date.”

“I would hardly call that a date,” Hera said, smiling at him.

Kanan dropped a hand to her waist and pulled her in for a kiss. Hera put her arms around his neck, enjoying the feel of his body against hers without the heavy leathers of his uniform between them. “Yeah?” he breathed against her mouth. “Well, I guess I could start looking for a corrupt cyborg to take out, but that’ll be harder to find –”

Hera ran a hand down his chest to curl around his belt buckle. “Maybe just keep wearing this when you get back,” she said.

“What, the entire –”

“You can take it off later,” Hera said. “I can take it off you later.” She kissed him again, long and slow, and then breathed, “I love you,” against his mouth.

“I love you too.”

She could feel Kanan’s lightsaber digging into his hip where he was holding onto her; he had never put it down.

At last he drew back, flipping his lightsaber around in his hand with nervous energy. “I’m taking the _Phantom_ , by the way,” he added. “Unless you need it here?”

Hera shook her head. “No, but if you’re just going into the city –”

“I have a feeling.” He shrugged self-consciously. “I’ll bring her back in one piece.”

“You’d better,” Hera said.

Kanan grinned at her, then glanced down at his lightsaber, as if surprised to see it there. There was a hook on his belt for it; his hand moved to put it there, then he seemed to change his mind and put it on the back of his belt instead.

“I’ll see you tonight,” he said, ducking his head quickly to kiss her again before starting for the door.

Hera followed him out, admiring the sway of his narrow hips and trying not to think about the fact that everything about the way he carried himself – the way he moved – changed when he was out of his uniform. Kanan had been an Inquisitor for most of the time she had known him, but he would never have become one if it hadn’t been for her.

Zeb and Sabine were both in the common room, Zeb napping in his big wooden chair and Sabine going through reconstructed holographic schematics of the bombs they had recovered. She looked up as they came in, waving her mug of caf – apparently only still awake due to the combination of caffeine and youthful enthusiasm – and saying, “I think I know who this guy is.”

Hera felt her heart stop. Sabine had seen Doriah, but there was no way that she could have known that he had anything to do with the bombs, that he was anything other than a Twi’lek who had just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

“What guy?” Kanan said, sounding distracted.

“The guy who built the bombs,” Sabine said. She took a sip of her caf, then blinked at him. “What are you wearing?”

“Why does everyone keep asking me that?”

“How do you know?” Hera asked, trying to keep her voice steady.

“Because I’ve talked with him on the HoloNet bomber boards,” Sabine said. “His username is, uh, hailtotheking_83.”

Hera pressed her fingers to her temples. _What in blazes, Doriah?_ “I told you to stay off the bomber boards, Sabine. You know the Bureau monitors them.”

“Yeah, well, the Bureau already knows who I am,” Sabine pointed out. “So I don’t see the point.”

“Do you know who this guy _actually_ is?” Kanan asked.

Sabine shrugged. “No one uses their real names on the boards. We’re not stupid.”

Kanan glanced at Hera, who looked away, unwilling to meet his eyes. He shrugged and told Sabine, “I live in hope. You never know with these rebel types.”

He swung himself up onto the ladder leading up the _Phantom_. “I’ll be on my comlink if you need me,” he called down.

“Where are you going?” Sabine asked.

“Out.” He slammed the hatch closed behind him.

Hera rubbed a hand over her face as she heard the _Phantom_ disengage from its docking cradle on the _Ghost_. “Can you trace his posts?” she asked Sabine, hoping that the answer would be _no_. It was a treasonous thought and she hated herself a little for it, but the sooner that this affair could be forgotten about, the better. She didn’t agree with her family, but she didn’t want to bring the full weight of the Imperial Security Bureau down on them either.

Sabine shook her head. “Chop and I already tried. I guess we could take it to the techies back on Naboo, but I don’t think they’d do any better either. He spoofed his back trail pretty good. Probably because he also knows the Bureau monitors the bomber boards.”

“Probably,” Hera agreed. She leaned against the wall, smiling a little as Zeb let out a particularly loud snore.

Following up on HoloNet posts had been how she had met Kanan six years ago. He was too smart to make treasonous comments on a public forum – or even a private one – but most people weren’t. Hera had posed as a rebel sympathizer and gone to Gorse to meet with one such individual, someone whose name she didn’t remember any more. Things had escalated from there.

Sabine picked up her caf mug, looked at it sadly, and then set it back down. She covered up a yawn with her hand, saying around it, “It’s a pretty standard design, but he knew that he’d be putting them on walkers and tanks and meant to set off all those secondary explosions, so there are some tricks in there too that I haven’t seen before. Well, except for one that was on the boards once; that’s how I knew who made them. He’s got a certain _style_.” She picked up her mug again, apparently having forgotten that it was empty, and blinked at it.

Hera stepped over to take it out of her hand. “Have you slept at all?”

“Uh –” Sabine blinked at the hologram in front of her. “What time is it?”

“Time for you to go to bed,” Hera said firmly.

“But it’s the middle of the day! I think.”

“And you’ve been up for two,” Hera said. “Get some rest. You’re not going to be any help if you’re too tired to see straight.”

“But –” Sabine gestured vaguely at the hologram.

Hera leaned over to shut it off. “Go take a nap, Sabine. I’m taking the _Ghost_ out anyway, so there’s no hurry.”

“You’re – what?”

“I’m taking the _Ghost_ out while Kanan runs his errand,” Hera said. “Agent Beneke asked me to check something for him, and I might not get another chance once the ISB team gets here. You and Zeb might as well sleep through it.”

Sabine yawned again. “Does it have to do with the bombing?”

“Probably not,” Hera admitted. “That’s why I want to get it done now.”

Sabine sighed and pushed herself up, collecting her helmet from the bench beside her; she was still in her armor. “Why’s the Bureau sending another team? We’re already here.”

“Specialist,” Hera said shortly. She was hoping that they would be reassigned before Agent Kallus arrived. It wasn’t that farfetched; Beneke hated his colleague, and had done for as long as Hera had known him.

Sabine looked like she was going to question Hera further, then covered another yawn with her fist and apparently decided to give up for the time being. “Okay.”

She stumbled out of the common room without any further argument; Hera heard her door open and shut as she stepped over to lay a hand on Zeb’s shoulder.

He came awake instantly, flailing arms and legs so that Hera had to lean quickly out of the way. “Wha – what? Are we under attack?”

“Not yet,” Hera said. She tipped her head in the direction of the cabins. “Go get some real sleep. I’m taking the _Ghost_ into hyperspace for a bit to check something out, so you’ve got the time. We’re not going to be doing much here anyway until the task force arrives.”

Zeb pushed himself up. “Why’re they sending a task force anyway? Seems like a waste of resources.”

“Come on, Zeb,” Hera said. “Surely you’ve been with us long enough to know that that’s government work for you.”

*

Ezra was on the way back to his speeder bike along the upstairs route, loaded down with a couple of string bags of food – better to be carrying that than a lot of loose credits – when he felt it again.

This time it hummed along his skin, making the hair on the back of his neck rise. Ezra felt the not-sound fill the air around him, blanking out the murmur of the passersby on the street below him. He dropped the bags he was carrying, feeling his hands flex uselessly and crept to the side of the roof he had been transiting, dropping low so that he wouldn’t be immediately visible to anyone looking up.

It was the Inquisitor. It had to be the Inquisitor. That was the only connection Ezra could think of to all the times before when he had felt that thing, that whatever it was, even if half the time he hadn’t seen the guy there. Ezra didn’t know what the guy wanted with him, but he didn’t particularly want to find out. Sure, he liked to mess with the local Imperials, but he had never done anything particularly bad – it wasn’t as though he was the one who had set all those bombs at the parade last night.

Ezra put both hands on the parapet and put his head cautiously up over it, peering down into the street. He was expecting to see the street cleared by the passage of the Inquisitor and an entourage of stormtroopers, and sure, there were a couple of stormtroopers down the block, but they weren’t doing anything. Everything looked normal, people going about their daily business, because bombing or not, life didn’t stop. Kids still had to go to school, people still had to work, families still needed groceries. They all just had to do it under the watchful eye of the Empire – same as they did every day, except the Empire was watching just that little bit closer today.

The Inquisitor wasn’t down there. Shuddering, Ezra glanced back over his shoulder, preparing to see him there on the roof waiting for him, but there was nothing there except for his fallen bags. But he was here somewhere. Ezra could feel it.

He looked back at the street, wondering how he could have missed him, but there was no one there dressed all in black with a lightsaber on his belt, the Imperial cog painted on his armor, trailing the might of the Empire like a cloak.

“Okay,” Ezra said out loud. “Now you’re just starting to lose it.”

He started to stand up, shaking his head at his own stupidity, then froze.

There was a guy down there. Just a guy in green and gray, not Inquisitor’s blacks, and with a blaster strapped to his leg instead of a lightsaber, but when Ezra looked at him he felt it again – the same thing he had felt around the Inquisitor. But it couldn’t be the Inquisitor. Everyone know that the Imperials never lowered themselves to going around in street clothes, at least not where anyone else could see; for all Ezra knew the stormies just folded themselves up in drawers every night.

Ezra paced along the top of the roof, shadowing the guy as he made his way down the street. He didn’t move anything like an Imperial, without any of that stiffness they all had. This guy had the gunslinger’s swagger that the occasional bounty hunter or smuggler who stopped off on Lothal did, that slightly loose spacer’s walk that was all hips and fluid motion. No one with half a brain messed with someone who walked like that. They’d blast you before you had a chance to draw your weapon and step over your body on the way to the bar.

_Great_ , he thought. _Now who’s this guy?_

He reached the end of the roof and hesitated, wondering if he should go back and get his groceries to keep following the gunslinger or just forget this and go back to his tower. He was standing on the corner of the parapet when the guy stopped suddenly, ignoring the other pedestrians in the street, and turned around to look up at Ezra.

It was the Inquisitor.

Ezra stepped back so quickly that he fell off the parapet, landing on his backside and pushing himself backwards, gloved palms scraping across the roof. “Oh stang, oh stang, oh stang –”

He must have seen Ezra. He’d be up here in a moment, which meant that Ezra had to run now, to try and get as much of a head start as he could manage.

He scrambled to his feet and ran for his groceries, scooping them up from the roof without a moment’s hesitation. He knew better to leave food behind if he had any other choice; he could always ditch it later if he had to.

Ezra went from one roof to the other in a miscalculated leap, stumbling a little as he landed and almost turning his ankle. He pushed himself up and kept running, not looking back until he was a good two blocks over and out of breath. He risked a look behind him, bracing himself to see the Inquisitor, but there was no one there.

Ezra let the bags fall to the rooftop beside him and leaned over, hands against his thighs as he tried to force his pounding heart to slow. The Inquisitor must not have seen him.

But he had been _there_. He had been right here in Capital City, dressed like a normal person, and no one had realized – no one had even looked twice at him. It was as though Ezra was the only being there who had realized that he wasn’t just another gunslinger.

He straightened up, pressing his hands against his forehead. “This can’t be happening,” he groaned. What did an Inquisitor want with _him_? He was no one. It couldn’t be about his parents; that had been years ago, and they were long gone, anyway.

He had to get out of here. Get out of Capital City and not come back until the Inquisitor had gone, stick to the outlying settlements – spend some more time on his own. Ezra was used to that. The Inquisitor would lose interest sooner rather than later; Ezra just wasn’t that interesting. He’d lose interest and he’d go back to wherever he came from, and then everything could go back to normal. It would be fine.

Ezra straightened up, still panting a little, and reached for his bags. It was time to get out of here. Except –

If the Inquisitor hadn’t seen him, then maybe he wouldn’t notice if Ezra got a little closer. Ezra wasn’t going to do anything stupid; he just wanted a closer look at the guy. He had to have a _reason_ for chasing Ezra like this.

Okay, Ezra decided, one quick peek. No funny stuff. And then he’d get out of here. Anything that brought an Inquisitor to Lothal wasn’t something that he wanted to be mixed up in anyway.

*

Doriah didn’t let go of Xiaan’s hand the entire way to Cham’s stateroom, and once they were there, let Xiaan pull him down onto the couch beside him, wrapping an arm around her shoulders when she leaned against him. He would clearly have preferred to remain standing, but Doriah had never been able to refuse Xiaan anything.

Or at least not since they had returned to the fleet, Cham amended. Xiaan had only been five when they had left for the colony, Doriah thirteen, and by then Cham had already been spending most of his time away from both the Lessu townhouse and the Syndulla estates. He couldn’t remember how Doriah had treated Xiaan then, though he was sure he must have seen them together at numerous points. Alecto’s sister Clotho, Doriah’s mother, had been living with them; their home village had been completely wiped out during the Clone Wars and there had been nowhere for Clotho to return after the Separatist occupation had ended, not with their parents and youngest sister killed and their home destroyed.

Clotho had been on Ryloth with Cham when they had heard about the destruction of the colony. She had been with him when her sister had come back and four years later when Doriah and Xiaan had, and had done what she could for a son who was practically a stranger and a fifth cousin who had refused to leave his side for the better part of a year. But the Empire had killed her, the same way it had killed Xiaan’s mother, and then despite everything Cham and Alecto had tried, Doriah and Xiaan had had no one but each other.

_The gods give with the one hand and take with the other –_

Cham put the memory aside and leaned back against his desk, doing what he could to make his posture as open as possible, to make this a conversation between family and not an edict laid down from clan head to plebeian client. He saw Alecto hesitate for a minute, hovering between the desk and the couch, then she stepped towards him, canting her hip against the corner of the desk. Doriah’s mouth tightened slightly, noting it.

“Hera,” he said shortly, and Xiaan looked up, folding both her hands around one of his. Her gaze flicked from Cham to Alecto, her eyes wide. “You knew about her? How long?”

“She was on Lothal?” Alecto said, her voice a little plaintive. “You saw her? Was she well?”

Doriah gritted his teeth. “Except for the part where I almost blew her up.”

Alecto jerked forward as Cham’s heart stopped. “What?”

Doriah held his gaze for what felt like too long before he said, “She wasn’t hurt, but I didn’t know that when the blasted bombs went off. You don’t think you could have mentioned that my cousin is an _Imperial agent_?”

He spat the words like a curse, starting to rise to his feet before Xiaan pulled him down with a death grip on his hand. “You saw her on Thyferra. You spoke to her, tried to murder her lover – all that and bringing her home never crossed your mind? I know what people in this fleet will do to collaborators, but I never thought that you would do that to your own daughter.”

“ _What_?” Cham straightened so quickly he had to slap his good hand against the side of his desk to keep from falling.

Doriah’s expression held Alecto’s simmering rage. “You think I don’t know what this fleet does to people they think are collaborators? _I’ve_ been hauled into back corridors so someone could try and kick the poodoo out of me, and it was never any secret what happened to me. For all I know you think the same blasted thing about Hera.”

“What?” Cham said again. “Doriah –”

This time Doriah stood, his hand slipping free of Xiaan’s grip. She stared up at him, her hands folded white-knuckled in her lap. “The only reason I left her was because someone had a blaster pointed at my head, but I never thought I’d hear that kind of Imperial propaganda come out of my own cousin’s mouth, Uncle, why did you _leave her there_?”

“Because she shot me!” Cham snapped. “And because she called down Imperial reinforcements on our heads!”

Doriah’s gaze flicked to the sling Cham was still wearing, then he crossed his arms over his chest and snarled, “What did you do? Besides try and kill the man she loves. She’s not too happy with you about that.”

“The man she _loves_?” Alecto spat. “That abomination?”

Doriah’s lip curled. “Sometimes when you’re in a situation like that you do things to survive that no one who’s lived their whole life free will ever understand. Sometimes it’s the only way to survive.”

Xiaan stood suddenly, pushing her way in front of Doriah as though trying to protect him. Her hands clenched into fists as she said in her soft voice, “Stop yelling at each other.”

Doriah looked down at her, his expression stricken. “Xi –”

She took a deep breath, then tilted her chin up as she stepped back to lean against Doriah’s chest, letting him take her hand. “You have to tell us about Hera, Uncle,” she said. “You have to. Everyone else is gone, but Hera’s –” She raised her chin, meeting Cham’s gaze. “You have to, Uncle.”

*

Zeb and Sabine were still holed up in their respective cabins when the _Ghost_ flashed out of hyperspace.

“Start running all scanners, Chop,” Hera said, leaning forward to peer out the viewport. The system whose coordinates Agent Beneke had given her was uninhabited and didn’t have a name, just a numerical designation. “I don’t see any debris out there. You got the right hyperspace coordinates, didn’t you?”

Chopper chortled an annoyed response.

“Fine, fine,” Hera said. She turned her attention to her sensor boards, studying the results as the scans started coming in. “I’ve never seen energy readings like this before – you’re recording everything, right?”

That got her another round of angry beeping.

Hera shook her head and eased the _Ghost_ forward, feeling the back of her neck prickle. A normal supply convoy consisted of a single _Gozanti_ -class transport with four TIE fighters, though out here on the Rim that might be increased to two or three transports with the equivalent number of TIEs. Agent Beneke said that the entire convoy had been destroyed. Even if there wasn’t debris large enough for her to pick up with the naked eye – pretty unlikely, given the vast size of any given star system – there should have been something registering on the _Ghost_ ’s scanners. Energy spikes from ship’s droids, organic matter from crew members or TIE pilots, something.

Nothing. Just that strange energy reading.

“Run this through the database, Chop,” Hera said. “See if there’s any match.”

While he was doing that she took the _Ghost_ on a long loop through the system, hoping that maybe the asteroid field was blocking her sensors from picking up any sign of the convoy, but there was still nothing.

Chopper’s response came back a moment later. Hera turned to stare at him. “What do you mean it’s above my security clearance? Try Kanan’s. Oh, you already did that. Of course you already did that, what was I thinking?”

_Classified?_ Hera thought. Beneke had said that the incident reports were beyond his security clearance, which meant – what? Had this been some kind of weapons test that the convoy had stumbled into? Hera had heard about things like that happening before; it was rare, but the Empire had plenty of transports and TIEs. It could afford to lose a few in order to keep a secret.

“I don’t think there’s anything here,” she finally concluded. “Agent Beneke’s going to be disappointed. I’m going to plot a jump back to Lothal.”

She glanced up as the cabin door slid open and Sabine came in, wearing loose pants and a tank top that bared well-muscled arms. “Where are we?” she asked, dropping into the co-pilot’s seat.

“IG-45S978,” Hera said.

“Why?”

Hera shrugged, then showed her the sensor boards. “Have you ever seen readings like this before? Maybe back on Mandalore?”

A few of the Empire’s experimental projects were based on Mandalore, at least the ones in their early stages. No one needed to worry about damaging the environment on Mandalore even more than it already was, which made it ideal as a testing ground. Not that the Empire cared particularly anyway, but Mandalore had a certain cultural cachet in the galaxy that made the kind of destructive practices they were prone to elsewhere impolitic.

Sabine studied the sensor readings, then shook her head. “I’ve never seen anything like this,” she said. “Why are we out here, anyway?”

“There was an Imperial convoy destroyed here a few days ago,” Hera said. “Agent Beneke wanted me to look at the site, but –” She flipped a hand towards the viewport. “There’s not even any debris.”

Sabine’s lips moved silently for a moment, then she said, “You know…one of the planets on this vector is Lothal.”

“Lothal?” Hera looked at her. “There was a convoy that left Lothal right after we arrived, something Kanan had to…” She let the words trail off, remembering Agent Beneke ordering her not to tell Kanan about this. She had just assumed that that was because Beneke didn’t like Kanan and suspected that he would share ISB information with the Inquisition.

Sabine gave her an odd look. “Should I ask?”

“Probably not,” Hera admitted. She sighed and looked back at the starfield outside. “There’s no point in staying; we might as well go back to Lothal.”

“About Lothal,” Sabine began, her voice halting.

Hera turned her chair to face her. “What is it?”

Sabine glanced down, catching her lower lip between her teeth, then settled her shoulders and raised her gaze to Hera’s. “The parade yesterday, the fireworks –”

“I know those were yours,” Hera said, smiling a little at her.

“What?” Sabine stared at her. “I mean – how did you know that? Commandant Aresko took all the credit, even though –”

“He took the credit because he had already told Minister Tua that he arranged for the pyrotechnic show,” Hera said. “So he couldn’t back off then, even though he probably wanted to.” She leaned back in her seat, frowning at Sabine. “I know that you didn’t have anything to do with the bombing.”

Sabine’s gaze slid sideways. “Even with my track record?”

“Not exactly your style,” Hera said.

“Hey, I could have –” At the look Hera gave her, Sabine added hastily, “And I’ll stop talking now.”

“Probably a good idea,” Hera agreed. “You have that jump calculated, Chop?”

At his _whir_ of agreement, Hera reached for the ship’s hyperdrive lever and slid it forward, watching the starfield blur into long lines.

Sabine slumped back in the co-pilot’s seat, fiddling with the hem of her tank top. “How do you _know_ I didn’t have anything to do with it?”

“Too messy,” Hera said immediately. “And too much chance of civilian casualties. Besides, it would have been better timed to coincide with the light show.”

_That, and I know exactly who did it._

“I –” Sabine grimaced. “I guess I can’t argue with that.” She hesitated for a long moment, then said, “Your cousin –”

Hera turned and frowned at her.

Sabine looked down again. “Yeah, okay,” she said, then covered a yawn with her hand. “I get it.”

_No_ , Hera thought. _You really don’t._ She had read Sabine’s files; Sabine’s family might not be the pride of the Empire, but at least they weren’t on the terrorist watch list. Well, mostly.

Sabine pushed herself up, then hesitated with her hand on the back of the chair. “Hera – if you ever want to, um…talk. About your family –”

“Have a nice nap, Sabine,” Hera said.

Sabine let her hand drop down to her side. “Point taken.”

“But thank you for the offer.” Hera turned back to stare out the viewport, hearing the cockpit door slide open and then closed behind her.

_I hope Kanan is having more luck than me right now._

*

_Caleb, what are you doing?_

Kanan gritted his teeth, trying to shove the unwelcome thought aside. Caleb Dume hadn’t called the shots in his life for a long time now – Caleb Dume was probably catatonic with horror in a corner of Kanan’s brain if he was still around, because this was never the life Caleb had dreamed of back at the Jedi Temple. Caleb Dume had wanted to grow up to become a grand Jedi Knight like Obi-Wan Kenobi or Mace Windu, one of the saviors of the galaxy, not one of the people who helped keep it clasped in darkness.

Not that Kanan could really blame the kid, or whatever shreds of him still remained. Some days all he wanted was to curl up in a catatonic ball too, because the thought of facing what he had chosen to make himself was just too much to bear. He’d done that a lot back at the Crucible – buried Kanan Jarrus the same way he had buried Caleb Dume years earlier, and only dragged himself out of that comforting blankness for Hera. It meant that he had to know exactly what he was doing, that there was no barrier between him and his actions.

Sometimes, though less than he had in the years immediately following his return from Mustafar, he still thought about going back there. There were days when Kanan wanted to not _be_ so badly that it hurt, when it was all he could do not to leave Hera sleeping in their bed and leave the _Ghost_ , go back to Mustafar and just let the Crucible win.

Except the Hunter was dead, and as much as Kanan had hated him, the Hunter was the only other Inquisitor he had ever been able to work alongside without someone ending up dead. The Inquisition wouldn’t let him murder his way through the Crucible a second time, no matter how much the dead weight needed to be culled.

And when it came down to it, Kanan was weak. He wanted his lover and his team and his home; he had only sold his soul to the Empire the first time because he knew that there was someone waiting on the other end to make it worth pulling himself out of the fire for. He was weak, and the Crucible knew it, and if he tried to take his team out of the line of fire by going back to Mustafar the Crucible knew that they would still be able to yank his chain by threatening them. Or worse –

Hera had been protected when he had been at the Crucible; she’d been ISB and Nemesis and had had Darth Vader for a patron. But most of the other trainees at the Crucible hadn’t been so lucky. And the Crucible didn’t want any of its recruits to have loyalties to anything – or anyone – other than the Empire. If Kanan went back there, the Crucible would make him kill his entire team.

_So what in blazes are you doing, Kanan?_

_You know what? I have no idea._

He could feel the boy in the Force, strong and completely untrained – a feral solitary was what they would have called him back at the Jedi Temple, back when there had still been a Jedi Order. It was what he had been looking for when he had been testing cadets at the Imperial Academy, what he had been praying not to find there. Kanan knew that he should just let the boy go, pretend that none of this had ever happened – either that or get a squad of stormtroopers and hunt him down to hand over to Project Harvester.

Which left him here, walking down the street in civilian clothes waiting for the kid to take the bait. _What are you doing, Caleb?_

_Something stupid._

The kid had come down off the rooftops and was on the ground now, threading his way through the crowd behind Kanan. Kanan had met his fair share of pickpockets during his day – had been one back on Kaller, though it wasn’t exactly a skill taught by the Jedi and he had been figuring it out as he went, with varying degrees of success – and if he’d gotten his read on the boy right, he thought he knew what the kid was going to do. It wasn’t what he would have done at that age, but he had been someone else then.

He was in the central market now. There were extra stormtroopers on guard as a precaution; on other worlds insurgent attacks on public events like Empire Day celebrations often resulted in copycat actions later. Many of them didn’t bother to discern between Imperial targets and civilian ones, and those kind of attacks always resulted in bystander casualties either deliberate or otherwise. They had gotten lucky yesterday: the only significant casualties had been Imperial, though Kanan had checked and the local medcenters had reported some minor injuries sustained when the crowd had tried to stampede away from ground zero of the attack.

A few of the nearest stormtroopers glanced at him as Kanan lingered by a fruit stand, picking through jogans before taking one and tossing a credchip to the stall’s owner. He took a bite out of it, turning to grin at the stormtroopers. If any of them recognized him out of his blacks he’d eat his own boots.

The stormtroopers looked at each other, hesitating, but he hadn’t done anything they could arrest him for yet. Kanan ate more of his jogan, making his way through the crowded market square and glancing at the stalls as he passed them. He didn’t know how long this was going to take, and if he was going to be in the market much longer he might as well get something for Hera. She had a sweet tooth and there was a stand selling small iced cakes she would probably like.

Kanan had only take a few steps in that direction when he felt a shift in the Force. _Fine, no cake._ He turned to look behind him, putting a hand on the back of his belt and trying not to wince when all he touched was leather and the magnetic clasp that had held his lightsaber in place.

“Oh, wonderful,” he said, making the being nearest him, a tall green-skinned Rodian female, look at him oddly. “Probably should have seen that one coming.”

*

“Have you ever met him?”

Doriah glanced over his shoulder to see Xiaan pushing blankets together into a nest on his bunk; after the past few days, he wasn’t surprised to find that she wanted to share a bed now that he was back. They had the entire time they had been in the Baron’s household, Xiaan crying herself to sleep every night for the first six months and Doriah trying to comfort her despite the fact that crying had seemed like a pretty good idea to him, too. They still slept together when one of them was having a bad time; Xiaan’s nightmares had never entirely gone away. Neither had his, for that matter.

“Met who? Hera’s Inquisitor? I tried to shoot him; if I’d known he was Hera’s –” Doriah didn’t know what word to use, “– I would have pulled the trigger a couple more times.”

“Not him.” Xiaan picked up a pillow and pulled it into her lap, settling down with her back against the wall and her knees drawn up. 

Doriah turned his chair around from the desk, shutting off the holoprojector as he did so, and frowned until he realized who Xiaan had to mean. “The Fenn boy?”

She nodded.

“I don’t think I’ve met any of the Fenns in the fleet,” Doriah said. He narrowed his eyes, thinking. “I think I met Thamir back on Ryloth, before we went to the colony, but that was years ago and I’m pretty sure he was an ass. He is – he was – a couple years younger than me. And probably dead, anyway. Nawara’s – I don’t think Secchun Fenn’s ever even let him off the _Mercy Kill_. I’d be surprised if she had.”

He got up and crossed the room to sit down on the bunk, pulling his legs up tailor-style. “You’re not seriously worried about that, are you?”

Xiaan picked at some of the embroidery on the pillow. “I was just wondering.”

“Hey,” Doriah said gently, and she looked up at him. “Cham might not have his priorities in order, but he’s not going to make you marry that kid.”

She nodded, then scooted over a little to make space for him in the nest of blankets. Doriah clambered over to sit beside her, and she curled up with her head on his thigh, her lekku falling over her shoulders and across his knees. Doriah put his arm around her, his fingers brushing the thin line of scar tissue along the back of her right shoulder. It was the only visible mark she had from their enslavement.

“Hera?” she said in a small voice.

“What about her?”

“She’s all right?”

“For a certain value of the term.” Cham had shown him the holos, the ones Fulcrum had brought back from Stygeon Prime. _They didn’t do anything to me_ , Hera had said back on Lothal, but gods help him, it didn’t look that way. Maybe compared to what Doriah and Xiaan had gone through – there were days when an empty cell with no one around him would have been his idea of paradise, except that that would have meant leaving Xiaan alone– it was nothing, but it would have been a nightmare for Hera. For any Twi’lek. _If I ever get my hands on that Imp son of a –_

“Why did they do that to her?” Xiaan asked, her voice very soft. She had seen enough of the holos to get the general idea, but had had to walk away in the middle of the second one; Doriah had heard her crying in the ‘fresher. 

“Because the Empire likes to corrupt everything it gets its hands on,” Doriah said, bending his head over her. “Especially the innocent.” _You know what it did to us_ , he didn’t have to say.

Xiaan was quiet. She was still holding the pillow, pulling it against her chest and wrapping her arms around it, and for a few moments Doriah thought that she had gone to sleep. Then she said, “I miss her.”

“I know, Xi. I miss her too.”

Xiaan rolled over to look up at him. “I hate them,” she said. “The Empire. Doriah, I hate them, _I hate them_ –”

“I know,” Doriah said again.

Xiaan scrambled up, scrubbing a hand beneath her eyes. She let out a ragged breath that whistled through her teeth – two of them were crooked – then rubbed at her tears again and said, “You could – we could find out.”

Doriah pulled his knees up, resting his forearms across them. “Find out what?”

Xiaan took a deep breath, pushing at the worn knees of the pants she was wearing to sleep in. “About Hera. What the Empire did. Maybe the others, too.”

“I’m listening,” Doriah said, but he thought that if there had been any way Cham would have found it years earlier. Hera, Ojeda, Nury, the twins – everyone else from the colony – they were the ghosts that haunted the fleet, that haunted the clan and the family, and he knew that Cham would have torn apart the galaxy if there had ever been even the faintest chance he could find Hera. Except now that he had –

Doriah was going to drive himself mad over this, but at least he probably wasn’t going to be the only person in his family with that problem.

“Hera’s ISB,” Xiaan said. “The program she was in, Nemesis, that’s an ISB program; their codes are in the metadata on the files Fulcrum gave Uncle Cham. I was looking at them when you were – it was easier to look at the files than the holos.” Her breath caught briefly, and she looked down for a moment, catching her lower lip between her teeth.

“Yeah?” Doriah said gently.

Xiaan’s voice evened out as she went on, raising her head again. “Most ISB files aren’t stored in the central Imperial database, so they’re not accessible from any Imperial terminal the way a lot of files are, even if you have the right codes. They’re kept on separate servers, which means they’re only accessible from ISB terminals or computers that have access to those servers. The ISB has all those black bases, but we don’t know where any of them are, and there are only a couple of Imperial complexes that have a separate ISB attachment. Most of them are in the Core or the Inner Rim.”

Doriah nodded again, giving up on trying to figure out what she was getting at. Xiaan had a lot of experience explaining things in very small words to him. At least he understood what all these words meant this time.

“Except for the regional headquarters,” Xiaan went on. She looked at him expectantly.

“What, Naboo?” Doriah had been to Naboo once, though he hadn’t been off their master’s starship at the time, and it wasn’t exactly a good memory. Few of his memories from that time were.

Xiaan nodded. “The ISB Academy is there too. If Hera’s a field agent, then she must have attended.”

“Sure.”

Xiaan flattened the pillow against her lap and concluded, “So if you can get me into the Imperial Complex on Naboo I can slice into the ISB’s computers and copy the files on Hera and Project Nemesis. And the others, maybe.”

Doriah stared at her, too appalled to speak.

“It wouldn’t be that hard,” Xiaan said quickly. “Since they’re already in the Imperial Complex they won’t have the same kind of firewalls they’d have if I was trying to get in through a connected computer, especially if I can get into the server room.”

“No!” Doriah said.

“Especially if I take an astromech,” Xiaan added. “That will make it go faster, but I can do it by myself –”

“Xiaan, I love you, so don’t take this the wrong way,” Doriah said, “but are you out of your mind?”

“It’s a good plan!” she protested. “If you tell Uncle Cham –”

Doriah put his hands over his face. “First of all, I don’t think Cham’s listening to anything I say right now. Second, no, it’s not a good plan, Xi, because it’s pretty much impossible to get into an Imperial complex. Especially ISB HQ. Especially on the Emperor’s homeworld!”

Xiaan shrugged. “It can’t be that hard.”

“You don’t think the Empire will notice a couple of Twi’leks trying to sneak into one of the most secure facilities in the galaxy?” Doriah said dryly.

“Fulcrum broke into an Imperial black prison, didn’t she? And she’s a Togruta,” Xiaan said.

“She’s also a Jedi.”

Xiaan blinked at that, but went on, “At least we know where Naboo is.”

Doriah just shook his head. “You don’t even know that there’s going to be anything there.”

“There has to be,” Xiaan said firmly. She leaned forward and covered his hands with hers, looking expectantly up at him. “Promise me you’ll at least mention it to Uncle Cham. We could do it, Doriah – find out about Hera, about all the others if there are files there on the colony too. We _have_ to.”

Doriah shut his eyes. _Cham will never agree; it’s suicide._ “All right,” he said, looking at Xiaan again. “I’ll bring it up to Cham. But he probably won’t say yes.”

“He might,” Xiaan said, her face practically glowing with fervor. After a moment, she added hesitantly, “It’s not like we have any better options.”

_There is that damning fact._ Doriah just shrugged.

Xiaan set the pillow aside and climbed off the bed to get the lights, her eyes gleaming in the sudden darkness as she made her way back. Doriah lay down and put an arm out for her, Xiaan folding herself comfortably against him, warm and familiar.

“I could do it, you know,” she said. “It would be easy.”

“Easy is not exactly the word I would use.”

“You said that already.” Xiaan was quiet for a moment, then she added in a small voice, “I know Cham wouldn’t send me away, but – I need to do something, Doriah. You’re out there, and Aunt Alecto’s out there, and – I need to do something.”

“Xi –”

He felt her shift in the bunk, and then her mouth was on his, lips brushing over his. Doriah caught his breath, but before he had a chance to react to this new development he felt Xiaan pull away and settle back against his chest.

“Good night, Doriah,” she said.

He shut his eyes, letting his breath out before he pressed a kiss to her forehead. “Good night, Xiaan.”

*

Even though it didn’t exactly matter in space, there was no point in leaving the Free Ryloth fleet in the middle of the night cycle, which was how long it had taken for Cham Syndulla to finish having his familial spat so Ahsoka could speak with him. Ahsoka left the _Aegis_ docked in the hangar where she had parked it during the Lothal op, locked up tightly, and went about her normal nighttime routine in the ship. She was uncomfortably aware of all the other beings on the ship; she wasn’t used to this, and it gnawed at her in the Force in a way that she hadn’t expected and would have been ashamed of fifteen years ago, back when the Republic and the Jedi Order had still stood.

_Face it, Tano, you may have been on your own a little too long._

Ahsoka sighed and carried a mug of tea back to the lounge. QT-KT was already there, muttering distractedly to herself; as Ahsoka came in she trundled over and beeped something, opening a panel on her chassis and removing something, which she held out with one arm. Bemused, Ahsoka took it, finding that it was the datachip Barriss had given her back on Tatooine.

“I guess we’re lucky that didn’t go boom,” Ahsoka said. She set her mug down and leaned over to insert the datachip into the reader on the side of the holotable. What was it Barriss had said? _The ISB surveils its own people, then the monitoring teams pass around any particularly juicy holos._

“Oh, great. I’m about to watch Dume and Syndulla’s sex tapes, aren’t I?”

QT-KT chirped something sympathetic as Ahsoka slumped down into a seat, starting to rub at her face and then wincing when she hit her black eye.

“Can you get me a coldpack?” she asked the astromech, looking blearily at the menu screen that had come up. She didn’t know if she had the stomach for this after the past few days; she had already seen more of Caleb Dume than she really wanted to, and didn’t want to add yet another mess to that mystery.

QT-KT chirped again, then rolled off. Ahsoka prodded gingerly at the swollen skin around her eye; whatever else he was, Caleb Dume definitely hit like an eopie and her entire body hurt. _That could have gone very badly._

She squinted at the holographic menu screen through her good eye. There were fewer than a dozen files, each labeled with an alphanumeric designation that didn’t seem to be in any sort of order that Ahsoka could discern, though if she knew Barriss, then it was probably all carefully arranged to convey some kind of message. _What_ kind of message that happened to be Ahsoka had no idea; Barriss Offee had stopped being predictable when the Republic was still in its death throes.

QT-KT came back bearing a coldpack in one outstretched arm. Ahsoka took it gratefully, activated it, and pressed it to her black eye. “All right,” she said, reaching for the first icon on the screen. “Here goes nothing.”

*

_Five years ago_

Kanan wasn’t expecting the Inquisitor to touch him.

He flinched as the Pau’an’s hand curved over the back of his neck, automatically starting to pull away before the Inquisitor tightened his grip and Kanan froze in place. All he could hear was the sound of his own breathing, his breath scraping at the too-cool air of the room. His throat felt as raw as if he had been screaming, but he thought that he would remember if he had done that.

The Inquisitor shook him a little, almost fondly, and Kanan let him. He felt his gaze flick around in the room, in scattered motions like a bad holo as he tried not to look at the bodies of the beings he had killed. He had killed people before; it wasn’t like this was the first time. But this – this felt different.

The lightsaber was still on the floor by his feet. Kanan could have – should have – gone for it, made the Inquisitors kill him because there was no way he could get out of here on his own, but…Hera. They would kill Hera if he did that, he was certain of it.

_And that, Caleb Dume, is why attachments can be dangerous for a Jedi_ , he heard Depa Billaba whisper in his head. _You must not grow too attached, too fond, too in love with life as it is now. The universe is far from static, and as it changes, a Jedi’s role in it must evolve._

_Yeah, Master. I figured that one out._

The Inquisitor’s hand was still on his neck, moving one finger absently against Kanan’s skin in something that was too close to a caress for comfort. Kanan tried to regulate his ragged breathing, making himself reach for some of the meditative patterns he had known when he had been a padawan. Somewhat to his surprise, it actually worked, and he made himself look up, feeling the muscles in his neck flex under the Inquisitor’s hand.

The Nautolan Inquisitor was still pacing around the room, pausing to toe over the body of the being nearest him – the Quarren Kanan had decapitated. He stooped to pick up the Quarren’s head, holding it crookedly up by one tentacle.

“Unexpected, Jedi,” he said. “I wasn’t certain you’d have the nerve.”

“I told you, Whip, that he had proven himself with the Imperial Security Bureau,” said the Pau’an, and Kanan’s shaky grasp on his self-control threatened to slip entirely, his hands clenching into fists and his breath rasping out.

“Naboo is hardly Mustafar,” said the Nautolan. He tossed the Quarren’s head aside; Kanan flinched as it hit the floor and bounced. “And I told you, Hunter, that that was not proof.”

He stepped over to them, idly kicking the Bothan’s fallen lightsaber aside, and reached for Kanan. Kanan leaned back automatically, straight into the Pau’an’s grip. It tightened to hold him in place as the Nautolan put his fingers beneath Kanan’s chin, tilting his head from side to side to inspect him.

“He passed his first test,” said the Pau’an – the Hunter? “Just as Lord Vader predicted he would.”

The Nautolan – the Whip, the Pau’an had called him – snorted softly, and let go of Kanan’s chin with a dismissive gesture, sharpened nails scraping across his skin. “We shall see. Lord Vader thinks highly of the skills of the Jedi. Too highly. You know as well as I what happened to the others.”

“What happened to the others?” Kanan made himself ask. His voice came out uneven, shaking almost as badly as he was.

The Whip looked back at him, and smiled. “They went mad, Jedi,” he said. “And died.”

Kanan flinched as though he had been struck, feeling the Hunter’s grip tighten again on the back of his neck. _You should have let Darth Vader kill you_ , he thought. _Force help me_ –

But the Force was no longer with the Jedi; it hadn’t been for a long time now. And it was heavy here, so thick around them that Kanan could feel it in a way he hadn’t since he had last been at the Jedi Temple, like it was something tangible that he could reach out and grasp, a faint shimmer at the very corner of his vision and a lingering aftertaste on every breath he drew in and expelled.

The Force was here, but it wasn’t the light side.

“Them,” he said, his voice a raw croak, and managed to jerk his chin at the nearest body. “Who were they?”

He felt the Hunter’s breath stir his hair. “Trainees,” the Pau’an said. “Unskilled and unworthy of their lightsabers. You did us a favor, Jedi.”

“Yeah?” Kanan grated out through clenched teeth. His breath was coming too quick and too uneven; he could feel his pulse pounding in his throat. _You should have let them kill you._ “Maybe you should let me try you and your friend here next.”

The Hunter’s amusement darkened the Force. “You will have your chance,” he said, and gave Kanan another fond shake, like a mother anooba with her pup. Kanan’s hands opened and closed uselessly; any chance that he had had of finding that comforting peace again, that still calm of the living Force, had fled.

The Whip held out one hand, and the lightsaber at Kanan’s feet leapt up into his grip. In the light, Kanan could see that it was made out of some shiny black metal – a straight hilt in the center of a circular guard that went all the way around, with a blade emitter on each side. Kanan hadn’t realized it was a double-bladed lightsaber when he had been fighting with – when he had been holding it. And no Jedi would ever make a hilt with such an ostentatious guard.

The Whip looked down at the lightsaber, and then up at Kanan. “Interesting,” he said.

He passed the lightsaber to the Hunter, who hooked the lightsaber onto the back of his belt, beneath the one he was carrying on his back, which had the same odd round guard as the other Inquisitors’ lightsabers. _That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever seen._ Of course, Kanan hadn’t exactly seen a lot of lightsabers lately – not even his own, which was still hidden back on the _Ghost_ , unless they had searched the ship and found it.

_If I’d been carrying the blasted thing –_

He hadn’t even been wearing his armor or his blaster; he’d been forbidden from doing so in the ISB Complex, so he had left most of his gear back on the _Ghost_. He had just walked into the ISB regional headquarters like a damn fool, trusting that after a year working with Hera no one had worked out his secret. He had sold himself to the Empire for a warm bed and a steady paycheck, for Hera, but he had thought that he was safe from his. _Stupid, Caleb, how could you be so stupid?_

Kanan made himself look up at the Whip. “I passed your test,” he said, trying but not quite able to keep his voice from shaking. “What now?”

The Whip smiled. “Bring him,” he said to the Hunter, and strode away

Kanan stumbled as the Hunter pushed him forward, hand still on the back of his neck, and then nearly tripped over the Weequay woman’s outstretched arm. A door slid open as the Whip approached and he went out into the corridor beyond it, Kanan and the Hunter following.

The walls seemed to close around him as they got deeper into the building, his sense of the dark side growing. Kanan had spent most of the past nine years trying to forget about the Force, shoving down the instincts that had shaped him for the first thirteen years of his life. Jedi didn’t use the Force, Jedi _were_ the Force; they were the Force made flesh, made material, and they lived it and breathed it from birth to death and onwards into eternity. There was no way to just shut it down, close it off, not really, but Kanan had tried desperately to do so, and in the end all it had brought him was here.

There were lightsaber scars on some of the walls they passed, as if there had been fighting here. Kanan didn’t know what that meant, but he didn’t think it was a good sign, and seeing them made his fingers itch for a weapon he hadn’t carried since he had been another person. When he breathed in and out it was with the Force, the dark side shadowing everything around him, whispering, _hello, Jedi, what a delight to have you here._

_I am a being of light. I am a child of the Force. I will live and die a Jedi –_

_Maybe you will,_ whispered the dark side of the Force, _but you’ll be mine first._

They came to a stop in front of a closed door, besides which another Inquisitor was leaning. This one was female, wearing a sharply pointed helmet and with a trio of small, unfamiliar probe droids hovering around her – one was perched on the back of her wrist.

“So this is the Jedi the Hunter’s been on about for months,” she said, pushing herself off the wall. Her helmet’s face-plates slid back as she approached, revealing a green-skinned Mirialan about Kanan’s age. She looked him up and down, her lip curling. “You’re not exactly what I expected.”

“Sorry to disappoint,” Kanan said through his teeth.

One of her droids drifted up and settled on her shoulder, snapping its pincers in Kanan’s direction. She reached up and curved the backs of her fingers against his cheek, ignoring the way he flinched back against the Hunter’s hand. “I didn’t say I was disappointed.”

“Sorry, sweetheart,” Kanan made himself say. “I’m spoken for.”

Her smile curved up. “Oh, I’ve heard about your little Twi’lek girlfriend. Maybe I’ll go look her up after I’m done with you.”

Kanan lunged at her, the Hunter’s hand on the back of his neck jerking him back. The Mirialan’s blow hit him a moment later, a backhanded slap that sent his head snapping sideways. Her droid clicked its pincers in glee as she laughed. “This,” she said, “is going to be fun.”

“Control yourself, Patience,” said the Whip, sounding bored.

Kanan could taste blood in his mouth where he’d cut the inside of his lip on his teeth. He spat it at her feet, feeling the low murmur of the Hunter’s amusement in the Force, and saw her dark lips tilt up into a smile.

“Don’t worry, Jedi,” she said, touching his cheek with a gloved hand. “I’ll see you again.” She turned and strode off, her droids following her; the one sitting on her shoulder kept staring at Kanan, clicking its pincers meaningfully until they were both out of sight.

“So do you guys recruit for crazy or what?” Kanan snapped.

“You tell us, Jedi,” the Hunter said against his ear, and Kanan looked away, biting his aching lip.

“This one’s got a mouth on him,” the Whip observed.

The Hunter steered Kanan towards the door as the Whip waved it open, the lights coming on as they entered. The Hunter let go of Kanan’s neck to push him down into a chair; restraints snapped onto his wrists as he reflexively tried to pull away. He put a hand on Kanan’s throat to hold him in place, and Kanan froze.

“It will be easier if you don’t struggle,” the Hunter said.

“What will be easier?” Kanan demanded.

“This.” The Whip grabbed the back of his head and forced it forward, the Hunter moving his hand just in time to keep from choking him. Kanan didn’t have time to yell before the first blade scraped over his skull, leaving a line of fire across his skin.

He gritted his teeth to keep from making a sound, anything that might give the Inquisitors more satisfaction that they were already getting out of this. The Whip wasn’t bothering to be gentle; that first one hadn’t been the only cut, and Kanan could feel blood running down his neck, over his ears and dripping down his cheeks, the line of his jaw as the Whip pushed his head roughly to one side, then the other, to take off his beard before going back to his head.

He caught his breath on a curse as a particularly careless stroke took a chunk out of his left ear, then made himself exhale and say, “What, the Emperor’s too cheap to shell out for a barber droid? Isn’t this a little beneath you guys?”

The Whip closed a hand over the top of his head and pulled it back, sharp-nailed fingers digging into the fresh cuts. Kanan glared up at him, breathing hard through clenched teeth.

“You’ll keep a sober tongue in your head when speaking about His Imperial Majesty,” said the Whip.

“Make me,” Kanan said through gritted teeth.

The Whip raised his gaze to the Hunter, who had been standing and watching this procedure with grave satisfaction. Without speaking, the Hunter raised a hand, his fingers curving towards Kanan’s face.

Kanan felt the Force thicken around them and had half an instant of horrified realization before the pain began.

It started at the base of his neck and radiated outwards, until every inch of his body seemed to be on fire, the cuts and scrapes on his skull and jaw fading into nothingness in its face. He screamed, because it was scream or go mad, and he was still screaming when the pain finally stopped, seconds or hours or days later.

Kanan slumped against the chair, his breath dragging out of him and his hands clenched so tightly into fists that he could feel his short nails through the leather of his fingerless gloves. He could still feel the lingering echo of that terrible agony everywhere, all the energy seemingly sapped up at him. After too long he raised his gaze to the Hunter, gathering himself enough to spit at the Pau’an’s feet. There was blood in it; he must have reopened the cut on the inside of his lip.

“Remember who your master is, Jedi,” said the Hunter.

For once Kanan couldn’t think of anything to say. He just glared at the Hunter until the Whip shoved his head forward again, grabbing the collar of his shirt and ripping it open, the sound of tearing fabric scraping at Kanan’s ears.

He heard a high-pitched buzz, then pain sparked at the top of his spine, right where his neck joined his back. It went on and on, Kanan gritting his teeth against crying out again, trying to concentrate on the pattern he could feel being etched into his skin.

At last the buzzing stopped, the pressure releasing, though the pain remained, radiating out from his spine and turning his back and neck into burning agony. The Whip pulled him back upright, the Hunter raising a hand to unlock the restraints around Kanan’s wrists.

For a moment Kanan couldn’t even think of getting up, then the Whip grabbed him by the shoulder and forced him to his feet. Kanan swayed, feeling what was left of his shirt hanging off his shoulders before the Hunter caught the front of it in one hand and yanked, making Kanan stumble before the remaining fabric ripped apart. The Hunter dropped it and it lay like a dead thing between them.

Kanan raised a hand to his mouth, trying to wipe some of the blood away, but he suspected that he only managed to succeed in spreading it further across his face. “You could have just asked.”

The Hunter smiled. “You won’t need that anymore. Or the rest of it.”

Kanan looked in the direction he indicated, seeing the pile of black clothing sitting on a table nearby. He stepped hesitantly towards them, every movement sending agony arcing up his spine.

The room was cold, and he could feel the unfamiliar sensation of cool air moving across his newly-shaved head, stinging the open cuts and making him grit his teeth. He had to stop when he reached the table, fisting one hand and pressing it against the surface to keep himself upright as he looked at the neatly folded pile of clothing. After a moment he made himself sort through it. Black on black, lightened only by the Imperial symbol painted on the black vambraces. The boots were black too.

Kanan leaned against the table with clenched fists and stared at it. This would be a choice on his part, in a way that nothing else had been yet. He could still walk away from this – could still die a Jedi.

_What happened to the others?_

_They went mad and died._

He bit his lip, shaking his head and grimacing as the motion sent agony streaking up and down his neck. After a moment he thumped one fist against the tabletop, then pushed himself away to lean down and pull his boots off.

It didn’t take him long to undress, uncomfortably aware of the two Inquisitors behind him, the intensity of their attention in the Force. Kanan gritted his teeth and didn’t look back.

He reached for the black trousers on the now-disturbed pile, then hesitated, his fingers hovering just over the fabric. Kanan clenched his hand into a fist, swore silently, and picked up the trousers. He dressed as quickly as he could, trying not to think about what he was doing until he was adjusting the set of his tabards and realized that he was in a thinly-veiled version of the Jedi uniform.

The Jedi uniform hadn’t had the Imperial cog on it, of course.

_Damn them._

The fabric scraped painfully against the raw space on the back of his neck as he turned, making him grit his teeth again. The boots felt heavy and unfamiliar, the once-familiar uniform with its heavy synth-leather tabards confining after so many years out of it.

He raised his gaze to the Inquisitors and grated out, “Happy?”

The Hunter stepped forward, reaching behind himself to take the lightsaber off his belt – the one Kanan had used to kill the trainees who had attacked him. Kanan raised his chin, watching him approach warily.

“What is it that the Jedi used to say?” said the Hunter, holding the hilt out to him. Kanan gritted his teeth again and reached out to take it, but the Inquisitor didn’t release it to him even after he had closed his hand around the hilt.

“This weapon is your life.”

*

_Present day_

Ezra had shoved the lightsaber into his pack as soon as he had a chance, and made himself wait to look at it until he had put all his provisions away in the comm tower’s coldbox, which even mostly worked sometimes. He half-expected it to be gone when he pulled the flap of his pack back, but there it was.

And that Inquisitor hadn’t even guessed, Ezra thought, grinning as he pulled the lightsaber out. Guy wasn’t so tough after all.

The lightsaber looked amazing, Ezra thought, running his hands down its length. It was heavier than he had expected, made out of some kind of weathered black metal with silver-colored fittings. He could feel – something, he wasn’t sure what, but something about the thing tickled at his mind and he had a brief flash of –

_whisper of breath against his ear_  
_now this we can work with, jedi_  
_blood fire pain no no NO NO NO_  
_sparks flying red on red eyes all around_  
_long-fingered hand on the back of his neck_  
_this weapon is your life_

Ezra staggered back, nearly dropping the lightsaber, but when he made himself look at it again there was nothing there but the weapon itself, not the overwhelming sensation that had taken him a moment ago.

“Okay,” he said out loud, “that was weird.”

He weighed the lightsaber in his hand, but it didn’t do anything. Maybe he had imagined it – maybe nothing had happened at all.

After a moment of fumbling with the thing he found the trigger, trying not to jerk back as the blade suddenly sprang up in front of him. He felt the balance of the hilt shift a little in his hand, but the blade itself was nearly weightless. Ezra made a couple of passes with it, hearing the faint hum as the burning red blade cut through the air in front of him. It illuminated the grubby space of the tower loft, creating strange scarlet shadows in the corners and reflecting oddly off the dusty stormtrooper helmets he had collected over the years.

He brought the lightsaber back around in front of him, grasping the hilt with both hands, and grinned. This was way better than any of his usual Imperial trophies.

“Careful,” said a voice behind him. “You’ll cut your arm off.”

When Ezra turned, still holding the blazing lightsaber, it was to find the Inquisitor standing in the doorway.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Given that the Backbone 'verse Inquisitors have a different naming scheme than the canon Inquisitors (as those names hadn't yet been released when this story began), the Seventh Sister and the Fifth Brother (not appearing in this chapter) have other names in this story.


	12. Morning Star

The Inquisitor leaned a shoulder against the doorframe, his arms crossed over his chest. Up close, Ezra could see the marks of the previous night’s fight on his face, but they were already healing, the bruises faded to yellow-green and the cuts scabbed over. It should have been impossible; even with bacta – and Ezra couldn’t imagine anyone using bacta (imported and too expensive for everyday use) for something as minor than that – but there it was.

He didn’t look like an Inquisitor – well, not that Ezra had ever seen any other Inquisitors. He looked like he had back in Capital City, another gunslinger spacer just passing through Lothal on his way to somewhere more interesting. He definitely didn’t look like the Inquisitor from last night, except that Ezra knew deep down in his bones that it was the same guy. He couldn’t say how, he just…knew.

Ezra stared at him, too horrified by his presence here to think of anything to say. After a long moment of silence dragged out between them, the Inquisitor said in a drawling Outer Rim accent completely at odds with the refined Core accent he had used last night, “I think you have something that belongs to me.”

Ezra’s gaze dropped to the lightsaber hilt in his hand, to the red shadows the blade was still casting across the floor in front of him, then looked back up at the Inquisitor. “What – what do you want?”

“Well, right now I’ll settle for my lightsaber back.”

Ezra took an inadvertent step backwards, not so much because he didn’t want to give it up as because the weight of the Inquisitor’s attention on him was making the hair on the back of his neck stand up. There was no other way out of the tower, not with the turbolift busted; there was nowhere for Ezra to run to. “How did you find me?”

“Followed you after you lifted my ‘saber,” the Inquisitor said, raising one eyebrow. “That was a pretty good lift. I didn’t even feel it.”

“Thanks,” Ezra said. “I think. It can’t have been that good if you were able to find me.”

A corner of the Inquisitor’s mouth lifted a little in something that might have been a smile on someone else. “I’m resourceful. And I had a feeling you’d do something like that.”

Ezra stared at him. “What do you want with me?”

“Haven’t decided yet.” His gaze flickered across the room, taking in the faded posters and piles of discarded and partially dismantled stormtrooper helmets before settling back on Ezra. “Where are your parents?”

“I don’t have parents,” Ezra said, his shoulders going tight. He expected the Inquisitor to respond to that, but instead the man just raised his chin slightly in something that wasn’t quite a nod. Ezra felt another flicker of unease, his grip tightening on the lightsaber hilt. _Maybe I shouldn’t have said that._ If the Inquisitor wanted to do – something, Ezra knew all about the sorts of things that could happen to a boy alone on Lothal – then there wouldn’t be anyone to know or stop him. If anyone could stop an Inquisitor. Ezra wasn’t sure that there was. The Emperor, maybe, but it wasn’t like Palpatine was going to come out here to the Rim.

“What’s your name, kid?”

“Jabba the Hutt,” Ezra bit off.

The Inquisitor smiled again. “Yeah, I’ve met Jabba. Pull the other one.”

“What’s _your_ name?” Ezra snapped, figuring that he probably wouldn’t get an answer but that asking would really piss the Inquisitor off.

There was a beat of hesitation, then the Inquisitor said slowly, “Kanan Jarrus.”

Ezra bit his lip. “I’m Ezra.”

The Inquisitor inclined his head slightly, then lifted a hand. An instant later the lightsaber deactivated and pulled free of Ezra’s grip, landing in the Inquisitor’s outstretched hand. He put it back on his belt as Ezra stared at him, too stunned to react.

“What – what do you want?” Ezra asked again, starting to reach for his energy slingshot and then thinking better of it. He’d seen how easily the Inquisitor had deflected those blaster bolts last night. “Look, I didn’t have anything to do with those guys at the parade, or the – those people back at my parents’ house. I don’t know who they are.”

“I know,” the Inquisitor said. He pushed himself off the doorframe and stepped forward, into the loft. His gaze was intent on Ezra, equal parts concerned and predatory. “That was your parents’ house? What happened to them?”

“People like you.” Ezra watched the Inquisitor’s approach nervously, making himself stand his ground even though every instinct he had said to run. Sheer stubborn curiosity won out over self-preservation and he burst out, “Why did you follow me here? Besides getting your lightsaber back.”

The Inquisitor was making a slow circuit of the room, his gaze never settling on anything for more than a few seconds. He ran a finger over the dome of a TIE pilot’s helmet, then rubbed his fingers together to wipe the dust off before looking back up at Ezra. “I was curious.”

“You were _curious_?” Ezra said disbelievingly. “About _what_?”

“You.”

“Why?”

The Inquisitor crossed his arms over his chest again and considered Ezra, the seconds of silence stretching out between them. Ezra twitched nervously, leaning back on one foot and unable to keep his gaze from darting towards the open door. The Inquisitor was fast, faster than a normal human; he’d seen that last night. He wouldn’t make it.

And, for some reason, he didn’t want to go.

At last, the Inquisitor said slowly, “Fulcrum saw it too. The Force is strong with you.”

“What?” Ezra said, blinking at him. “The – what’s the Force?”

The Inquisitor frowned for a moment, his gaze turning inwards as he shaped empty air with his hands. “The Force is everywhere. It surrounds us and penetrates us, it binds the galaxy together. And it’s strong with you, Ezra.”

Ezra could feel the air shimmer with his words, that faint hum of not-quite-sound that had been haunting him these past few days. Maybe it should have disquieted him, but instead he felt something even out inside him, the tightness in his shoulders easing into calm. “So,” he said. “What do you want?”

He thought that he sensed a beat of hesitation from the Inquisitor before he said, “To offer you a choice. You can stay here on Lothal and live this life, or you can come with us, come with me, and learn the ways of the Force. You can learn what it truly means to be –” He stopped, then finished slowly, as if it wasn’t what he had originally meant to say, “– to be a part of this galaxy.”

“Work for the _Empire_?” Ezra said, grimacing. “Why would I want to do that?”

“Because the next Inquisitor who comes to Lothal won’t ask,” the Inquisitor said. “If you stay, it’s your choice. Maybe you can keep ahead of them; I’m not going to report this to my masters. But there’s something inside you, Ezra. You can feel it. You were meant to be more than this and you know it. You never will be if you stay here.”

Ezra looked at him, then lowered his gaze to the battered floor of the loft. When he looked up again, the Inquisitor was still watching him, his expression serious. “Usually the Empire doesn’t ask,” Ezra said. “It just takes.”

“Yeah,” the Inquisitor said. “I know. But I’m not the Empire, and I’m asking.”

*

Doriah woke to find Xiaan still curled against him, though she had shifted position a little in the night. She had one hand fisted in the front of his shirt, her cheek tucked against his shoulder, and as he tried to disentangle himself so that he could get up she said, sleepily but distinctly, “No.”

“Xi,” Doriah muttered, wrapping his fingers around hers. “I need to use the refresher.”

Grumbling faintly, she let him pry her fingers free and rolled away from him, pulling the blankets up over her face as he climbed out of the bunk. When he finished his business in the cabin’s tiny refresher and came out, he found Xiaan sitting up, carefully arranging the blankets around herself. She looked up as he approached, her cheeks darkening to magenta before she folded her hands in her lap, on top of the blankets. Her expression was grave beyond her years; she caught her lower lip briefly between her teeth, a nervous gesture Doriah had seen her make a thousand times before.

“Xiaan,” he said.

“Doriah,” she parroted back at him, then unfolded her hands and reached for him.

He let her draw him in slowly, leaning down to press his mouth to hers as she turned her face up to him. After a moment her lips parted and she reached up to curve her hand over the back of his neck, pulling him closer. Doriah touched her cheek with the backs of his fingers, then braced both his hands against the side of the bunk, careful not to touch her otherwise.

Her lips were soft, every movement hesitant at first but growing more confident. Aside from Numa the other day, which hardly counted, Doriah couldn’t remember the last time he had kissed someone – it must have been when they were still at their old master’s. There hadn’t been anyone since. There wouldn’t have been.

Eventually he felt Xiaan hesitate and drew back immediately. They were both out of breath; her eyes were wide, but she smiled a little at him, fingers lifting to brush across her lips before she dropped both hands back to her lap.

“I couldn’t marry anyone,” she said, her voice small. “I couldn’t go to another ship.”

“I know,” Doriah said. He shifted to lean against the bunk beside her, watching Xiaan push her fingers against the thighs of her sleeping pants.

She worried at her lower lip for a few moments, then said, “You should go talk to Uncle Cham.”

“About –”

“Us going to Naboo.”

Doriah sighed and rubbed a hand over his face. “He’s not going to go for it, Xi.”

“He might!” she protested. “It’s a good idea. And we need the intel.”

_We need_ any _intel_ , Doriah thought; he’d seen enough of what was on Tseebo’s implant to know that it had all been plans and tech – interesting and useful, but nothing that would help the fleet. Doriah had made sure of that before they had left Phoenix Squadron; he might have been pissed at Cham, but he wasn’t going to give up an opportunity for Free Ryloth if one existed. There just hadn’t been one there.

He sighed and dug the heels of both hands into his eye sockets, then said, “Okay. But you’re coming too. This is your idea, and you know Cham’s going to want more information than I can give him, since I only understand about half of what you said last night.”

Xiaan’s smile brightened, and she leaned over to kiss him on the mouth. Before Doriah could respond to that, she pulled back, saying, “He’ll agree. It’s a good plan.”

_It’s a terrible plan_ , Doriah thought, but he didn’t say it. “Convince him, not me.”

*

“You want to _what_?” Cham said, for the third or fourth time in the past five minutes. He looked from Alecto to Sinthya to Ahsoka, vaguely hoping that he was hallucinating some part of this conversation, but they all looked equally baffled – well, Alecto and Sinthya did, at least. Ahsoka’s expression he couldn’t read.

Xiaan fidgeted a little, her hands clasped behind her back, but insisted, “It’s a good plan, Uncle Cham. Doriah, tell him!”

“What do you think I’ve been doing?” Doriah protested.

Cham pressed his fingers to the bridge of his nose. “Naboo is the Emperor’s homeworld,” he said. “It’s the regional headquarters of the ISB.”

“Exactly, so –”

“Going to Naboo would be suicide,” Cham said, cutting Xiaan off. “I am not risking you that way.”

He knew that it was the wrong thing to say almost before he had finished speaking. Xiaan bristled like an angry nexu, her lekku going tight with indignation. Ignoring Doriah’s grab for her arm, she said, “That’s what you told my mother and you know what happened to her!”

Alecto put a hand over her face.

“Xiaan, it’s hardly the same –” Cham began, fighting down his automatic response. It hurt to think about his youngest sister, killed in some Imperial facility when she and Alecto had attempted to escape. Alecto had gotten away; Seku hadn’t. Seku hadn’t been like Aleema, always out there in the fight; Seku had preferred to stay on the estate on Ryloth, away from the crowds in Lessu. But she had argued against going to the colony, seeing it as abandoning Ryloth and their responsibilities to the clan. She had told him that the rest of Ryloth would view it as weakness. Maybe she had been right. But he knew that she wouldn’t want to risk her daughter this way.

“I’m not a child,” Xiaan said sharply. “You don’t have to protect me. I can do something that no one else in the fleet can do and you should let me use that, Uncle. Everyone else gets to fight for this family; why not me too?”

“You _are_ a child, Xiaan,” Cham said. “What you want to do isn’t fighting; it’s walking into the jaws of the Empire in the hope of doing something –”

“Of _doing_ something!” Xiaan insisted. “What else are you going to do, Uncle? The fleet doesn’t do anything anymore! All we do is run. You know Hera is out there, and the others have to be too, are you just going to let the Empire hurt them? You don’t know what it’s like! My brother’s out there!” Her voice caught, and she pressed a hand to her mouth.

Cham breathed out. “Xiaan, I know that Nury is out there, but this isn’t the way –”

“Then what is?” Alecto said suddenly. As he looked at her in betrayal, she added, “Xiaan’s right, Cham. Our family is out there somewhere. There are thousands of our people out there, stolen by the Empire. And the fleet –”

As Cham raised his brows, she glanced aside, then went on, “The fleet needs something, Cham. We’ve been surviving on the edge for so long that we’ve forgotten that there can be anything else. The fleet needs hope, Cham. It needs something to fight for. We’ve lost so much. If there’s even a chance that we can get something back –”

“Alecto –” Cham began, but before he could go on the door chime sounded. He sighed and added, “This isn’t over,” as he went to get the door.

He opened it to find Mishaan Secura standing there, her hand still raised to the control panel. She said, “General –”

Cham was already staring past her. “What are you doing here?” he demanded, too startled to be polite.

Secchun Fenn raised an eyebrow. “Is that any way to greet me, Syndulla?”

“Certainly, since you’re on my ship, Fenn. This is the second time you’ve arrived without having the courtesy to let me know in advance.”

“Don’t pretend like you wouldn’t have found some excuse to not see me,” Secchun said, stepping past Mishaan, who glanced aside rather than meet Cham’s eyes as she backed up. “I had some time and thought I’d come over so that we could continue our prior discussion in person.”

“That discussion is _closed_ ,” Cham snapped. He was aware of movement behind him, a soft whimper from Xiaan before Doriah tucked her against his side, but dealing with Secchun Fenn was like dealing with a wild gutkurr; he didn’t dare look away. At least he didn’t have to worry about anyone in his family – or Ahsoka, for that matter – stabbing him while his back was turned. “I’m sorry you made this trip for nothing, but it’s over, Fenn –”

“What do you want?” Alecto said, coming up behind Cham.

Secchun didn’t even look at her, her gaze still fixed on Cham. The corner of her mouth lifted slightly in a smile as she said, “Let’s talk, Syndulla. Maybe I can convince you.”

“I find that very unlikely, Fenn.” Cham put his good hand up to rest on the doorframe, partially to block Secchun’s view of the room and partially to keep Alecto from going for Secchun’s throat. He didn’t think that the latter was particularly likely, but you never knew with Alecto. He still had vivid memories of the time she had decked another curiate woman at a party back on Ryloth, two years before Hera had been born. Secchun Fenn had been there; she undoubtedly remembered too. It had been all over the society pages in the Ryloth HoloNews.

Secchun’s mouth tightened at the gesture. “What I have to say to you involves the future of the fleet and of Ryloth. I think you’ll want to hear it.”

Alecto sneered. “This is a Syndulla fleet, Fenn. If you don’t like it, leave.”

“This fleet is Ryloth and you both know it,” Secchun said, her gaze finally flickering towards Alecto in brief, dismissive acknowledgment. “Syndulla. Let me in.”

“Cham,” said Alecto warningly.

_I don’t have time for this_ , Cham thought, then sighed and took his hand off the doorframe. Alecto hissed in dismay as Secchun smiled.

“Am I interrupting?” she said, stepping inside. Her gaze moved around the room, taking in Xiaan tucked against Doriah’s side, Sinthya with her arms crossed over her chest, and Ahsoka’s cool, vaguely interested expression. “The mysterious Fulcrum, I presume.”

“I’m Fulcrum,” Ahsoka said, her voice neutral. “You must be Secchun Fenn.”

“This will only take a minute,” Cham told her, rubbing a hand over his face. “Give us the room, please.”

Secchun smiled, slow. “Or stay,” she said. “I’m sure we can find something to discuss.”

“Alecto will stay,” Cham said.

He didn’t know who was more surprised, Secchun or Alecto. After a moment, Alecto lifted her chin as if that had been her intention all along, tucking her thumbs into her blaster belt and letting the corner of her mouth curl in a smirk. Secchun snorted softly.

“Uncle,” Doriah said warily. He had his arm around Xiaan’s shoulders; her face was turned against his chest, apparently unwilling to even look at Secchun.

Cham shook his head slightly.

Doriah huffed out a breath and collected Xiaan with a whisper Cham couldn’t hear, keeping himself between her and Secchun as they left the room. Secchun watched them thoughtfully, her dark gaze hooded. Sinthya and Ahsoka followed, the door sliding shut behind Ahsoka with a finality that made Cham want to wince, though he managed to control himself before he did so.

“That was the girl?” Secchun said to Cham.

“Her name is Xiaan, and she’s not marrying your son, Fenn,” Alecto said. She stepped over to Cham’s desk and leaned against it, crossing her arms over her chest. “Get that idea out of your head and say whatever you came here to say, then leave.”

Secchun smiled, and Cham thought, _oh, no_. She strolled over to the couch and arranged herself on it, then tipped her head back to look up at Cham and Alecto and said, “I know you found your daughter.”

*

The hangar bay they had been assigned was empty when Hera landed the _Ghost_ back in the Lothal Imperial Complex; Kanan hadn’t returned with the _Phantom_ yet. She shut down the ship’s systems as Sabine and Zeb both got up, starting to reach for her comlink to check in with Kanan before changing her mind. If the _Phantom_ wasn’t back, then he was probably still busy doing – well, whatever it was he was doing. And he always came back. He was the only person Hera knew who did.

She shook her head to herself and got up to follow Sabine and Zeb out, Chopper grumbling along behind her. As the four of them went down the _Ghost_ ’s ramp, the hangar doors opened, admitting a light-skinned human man in an ISB uniform.

“Who’s that?” Sabine said.

“Oh, wonderful,” Hera muttered under her breath. To Zeb and Sabine, she added, “Stay here,” and strode forward to meet the new arrival.

“Agent Syndulla,” he said. “What a surprise to see you still alive.”

“Agent Kallus,” Hera returned, clasping her hands behind her back. “I could say the same. Sir.”

Kallus was a tall human male with gingery sideburns, one of the most senior field agents in the Bureau; he and Agent Beneke were contemporaries, though Beneke’s field days were long past. Hera had spent most of her career hoping that she would never have to work with him. Agent Kallus was…notorious, to say the least. And their encounters on Naboo had never gone well.

“I must admit, I wasn’t expecting to see your name on the report,” Kallus observed. His gaze flickered dismissively past her to Zeb and Sabine, who were still hanging back by the _Ghost_. “I’d heard Agent Beneke was soft-hearted enough to give you the leeway to choose your own team. I suppose after that…Inquisitor…of yours I shouldn’t be surprised that _this_ is what you managed to dig up. An Academy dropout and another alien. Roberto is getting soft in his old age, isn’t he?”

Hera clenched her fists, glad that he couldn’t see the gesture. “My team can get the job done. Sir.”

“That remains to be seen.” He looked past her again. “I was under the impression that your pet Inquisitor was still with you.”

“The Inquisitor is following up on a lead, sir,” Hera said, carefully keeping her voice level. She had gotten out of the habit of interacting with other ISB agents; she had used to be a lot better at keeping her head down. “I’m sure he’s looking forward to speaking with you.”

“An experience I can hardly contain my excitement over.” He snorted softly. “Well, Syndulla, I suppose you might as well introduce me to the dregs I’ll be working with during this particular assignment.”

Despite her best intentions, Hera couldn’t keep her lekku from twitching. “Excuse me? Sir.”

Kallus gave her an unimpressed look. “You and your team have been assigned to my command for the duration of this operation – something I did _not_ request, I might add, and in fact argued against. I prefer my colleagues to be at least somewhat adequate in the execution of their duties.”

_Why not just shoot me now and get it over with?_ Hera thought, but all she said was, “My team can get the job done, sir.”

She waited for a response, but instead of saying anything Kallus just walked past her towards the _Ghost_. Hera resisted the urge to swear and followed him, trying not to hurry too obviously in order to catch up.

“Oh, I have the feeling I’m not going to like this,” Zeb muttered under his breath, just barely loud enough to hear as she and Kallus drew close. Sabine gave him a sharp look; she had taken her helmet off and had it tucked under her arm.

Hera gave them a thin smile. “Zeb, Sabine, this is Agent Kallus. We’ll be operating under him for the time being.”

“Which will not be long if I have anything to say about it,” Kallus said. “I’ve no desire to be saddled with Roberto Beneke’s charity cases.”

“Charity –” Zeb rumbled, starting to step forward.

Hera raised a hand slightly; seeing it, he stopped. “Agent Kallus, this is Probationary Agent Sabine Wren and Garazeb Orrelios. And Chopper,” she added, as the astromech made an indignant noise.

Kallus’s gaze passed over Sabine to settle on Zeb. “A Lasat,” he said. “Well, this is quite a coincidence.”

Zeb crossed his arms. “You have a problem with Lasats, Agent?”

Something uncomfortably like a smile crossed Kallus’s face. “Hardly,” he said. “I don’t see the point of being concerned by the last member of a dead species.”

Zeb’s eyes narrowed, his ears pricking up. “What did you say?”

Hera suddenly flashed back to the reports she had read on the conquest of Lasan. _Oh no._ She jerked forward, not sure whether she meant to stop Zeb or Kallus, just as Kallus said, “I was on Lasan when the last of the Lasats died.”

Sabine and Hera both lunged for Zeb as he took a step towards Kallus. “What did you say?” he repeated, pushing against Sabine and Hera’s hands. She was faintly aware of the sound of the _Phantom_ entering the hangar, but all of her attention was on trying to keep Zeb from murdering a superior officer.

Kallus grinned. “I was the one who gave the order.”

“Why, you –”

Zeb surged forward again, Hera’s and Sabine’s booted feet sliding on the metal floor as they tried to hold him back.

The distinctive sound of an igniting lightsaber split the air.

“Hey!”

Kanan’s voice seemed to fill the whole hangar, bringing Zeb to an abrupt halt even as Kallus’s hand fell to the sidearm holstered on his hip. Hera looked up to see Kanan striding across the floor towards them, still in civilian dress but with his ignited lightsaber in one hand. He flicked the blade up in front of him as he came to a halt, the red glow illuminating the hollows of his cheeks.

Agent Kallus didn’t move his hand off his sidearm, his gaze sweeping over Kanan and apparently finding him wanting. “You must be the Inquisitor.”

“Yeah,” Kanan said, his Core accent so crisp it made Hera’s back teeth ache. “I am. Who the hell are you?”

Hera cautiously eased her grip on Zeb, trusting that Kanan would be able to keep the situation from escalating further. If he didn’t escalate it himself, that was. “Ka – Inquisitor,” she said. “This is Agent Kallus from the Bureau. He’s here to take over the Fulcrum investigation.”

Kanan’s pale-eyed gaze moved from Kallus to her, an eyebrow arching slightly. At her nod, he deactivated his lightsaber. “Great,” he said. “Have fun with that. Come on, Hera, let’s go. I’m sure Agent Kallus has his hands full with that –”

“While you’re under no obligation to remain, Inquisitor, Agent Syndulla and her team have been assigned to my command for the time being,” Kallus said, his mouth twisting. “I’ve no need of an Inquisitor in this matter.”

Kanan glanced at Hera again, a quick flicker of his eyes without moving his head. She jerked her chin in a nod, watching Kanan’s jaw go tight. He returned his lightsaber to the back of his belt and crossed his arms over his chest, his gaze fixed on Kallus.

“You might not need an Inquisitor,” he said, “but you’re going to get one. Just remember that I don’t take orders from you.”

“Just remember that Agent Syndulla does, Inquisitor.” Kallus let his gaze sweep dismissively over them. “I’ll see you both inside to go over the events of this most recent insurgent attack.”

Without waiting for a response, he turned and strode away.

Zeb growled deep in the back of his throat and started to take a step after him; Sabine shoved him back and said, “Zeb –”

Kanan turned towards him, his Core accent falling away as he demanded, “What’s with you? What in blazes was that?”

Zeb threw Sabine’s hands off and snarled, “I am _not_ taking orders from him!”

“Fine!” Kanan snapped. “So take orders from me and Hera. But you want to tell me what that was about?”

Zeb growled wordlessly and stormed up the ramp into the _Ghost_. Kanan spread his hands, looking from Sabine to Hera. “Someone want to tell me what I missed? Because it seems like it’s important.”

Almost at the same time, Sabine said, “Hera, you can’t just accept this. We’re not actually going to work with this guy, are we?”

Hera gritted her teeth. “We’re officers of the Empire, Sabine, we took oaths. We do our duty.”

“You heard what he said about Zeb! We can’t –”

“What _happened_?” Kanan repeated. 

Hera let out her breath, closing her eyes for a moment. “Let’s go inside,” she said, looking up at Kanan and Sabine. Sabine looked like she had half a mind to storm after Agent Kallus, which was exactly what Hera didn’t need today. Kanan, who knew all about the ISB chain of command, just looked confused. “I’ll explain while you’re changing.”

“Why am I changing?” Kanan said plaintively.

“You heard Agent Kallus,” Hera said, biting off the other agent’s name. “We have a meeting to get to. You should probably be in uniform for that.”

Kanan glanced down as if he had forgotten what he was wearing, then grimaced. “Oh. Oh, stang –”

“What?” Hera demanded, trying to imagine what else could possibly have gone wrong today. “Did something hap –”

Kanan tipped his head back towards the _Phantom_. Hera and Sabine followed his gaze, Hera blinking when she saw a slim human boy standing in the ship’s entrance, his arms crossed over his chest. He was younger than Sabine by a year or two, with hair so black that it was almost blue, and he looked like he would rather have been anywhere else in the galaxy than here.

Hera stared at him for a moment, uncomprehending, then finally recognized. “That’s the boy from the parade,” she said. “You found him. Why – why did you find him?” She looked back at Kanan. “What is he doing here?”

Kanan ran a hand back through his hair, fingers stopping at the base of his ponytail. “I’ll explain later.” He gestured to the boy. “Ezra, come here.”

The boy pushed away from the side of the _Phantom_ and made his way over to them, his expression wary. “Hi,” he said.

“Ezra, this is Agent Hera Syndulla and Agent Sabine Wren,” Kanan said. “Hera, Sabine – this is Ezra Bridger. He’ll be joining us on the _Ghost_.”

“What?” Sabine said.

“What?” Hera said.

“What?” said the boy.

Kanan made a distracted gesture with one hand, reaching up towards his hair again before forcing his hand down. “I’ll explain,” he repeated. “Uh – later, since we have a meeting.”

“Yes, you will,” Hera said, staring at him.

“Uh…” said Ezra, standing back on one heel and staring between them all with narrowed eyes, like he was trying to figure out which way to run. “Is it too late for me to change my mind?”

“Trust me, kid, it was too late by the time Inquisitor Eyebrows here decided you’d make a good addition to the team,” Sabine said.

Ezra’s gaze swept around to her, then brightened. He gave her what he clearly thought was a winning smile. “Hi.”

Sabine’s eyebrows went up. “No.”

Kanan rubbed a hand over his face. “If you and Zeb could keep an eye on him until Hera and I are done with this meeting, I would really appreciate it.”

Sabine frowned. “Is this ‘keep an eye on’ because he might blow the ship up, or –”

“Hey!” Ezra protested. “I didn’t have anything to do with that bombing!”

“We know,” Kanan said, making Sabine look at him sharply. “Just watch him, okay?”

“Okay,” she said, rolling her eyes. She caught Ezra by the shoulder and steered him towards the _Ghost_ ; he looked back at Kanan, then apparently decided Sabine was more interesting and went with her without further protest. At least he seemed to have distracted Sabine from Kallus and Zeb.

Hera turned back towards Kanan and spread her hands, completely lost for words.

He rubbed a hand over the back of his head. “Yeah…”

“Have you lost your mind?” she hissed. “Now is not the time for this!”

“How was I supposed to know that Agent Kallus was going to be here?” Kanan protested.

“That’s not what –” Hera took a deep breath, smoothing her hands down the thighs of her trousers. She let her breath out through her teeth and said the first thing that came to mind. “His parents are going to be wondering where he is!”

“He was living in an old comm tower outside Capital City!” Kanan said. “His parents aren’t exactly a problem.”

_If only that was true for all of us_ , Hera thought distractedly, then dragged her mind back to the matter at hand and said, “You didn’t think you should mention this to me first?”

“I wasn’t exactly planning on –”

Hera just stared at him.

“Okay,” Kanan said, raising his hands. “I probably should have brought up the possibility, I just didn’t think –”

Hera pressed her fingertips to her forehead. “We don’t have time for this. The last thing I need is for Agent Kallus to report back to Naboo that I can’t even be bothered to show up to a meeting on time, let alone whatever else he can drag up about me.” She caught Kanan by the arm and pulled him in the direction of the _Ghost_. “Which is probably a lot.”

“Why?” Kanan asked, coming along obediently. “You know him?”

Hera sighed, waiting for him to start up the ladder to the cockpit before she followed him. “He was a guest lecturer at the ISB Academy when I was a cadet there. And – he and Agent Beneke know each other. They’ve been rivals since – well, since before they added ‘Imperial’ onto the Bureau’s name.”

Kanan waited until they were both in the cockpit before he caught her by the shoulders, his touch gentle. “What’s wrong?”

Hera glanced away from him, reaching up to cover one of his hands with her own. “It’s nothing.”

“Hera, if he hurt you –”

Hera squeezed his fingers and looked up at his concerned face. “He never laid a hand on me, Kanan. He would have had to admit that I was there for that.” When Kanan frowned, she added reluctantly, “He doesn’t like aliens. He especially doesn’t like the idea that we should be allowed to serve the Empire like we’re actually people. It’s one of the things that he and Agent Beneke disagree on.”

Kanan’s frown deepened. “Say the word and he’s a dead man.”

Hera sighed. “You can’t kill everyone who’s ever insulted me for being a Twi’lek, Kanan.”

He shrugged. “One of the few perks of the job.”

She shook her head, leaning up to press a quick kiss to his mouth. “Few?” she said, wanting to change the subject.

“I didn’t say only.” He kissed her back quickly. “Okay. Let’s get this over with.”

*

Aunt Sinthya caught Mishaan Secura’s arm as the door closed behind them. “How does that blasted woman keep getting onboard?” she demanded. “You know Cham hates her.”

“I can’t tell a curiate not to board,” Mishaan retorted. “And it’s not as though General Syndulla has actually left orders that she’s not allowed on the _Hope_.”

“You’ve seen them go after each other in the Synedrion, you ought to know to at least give him some warning –”

“A plebeian _would_ say that –”

Xiaan Syndulla drew a little away from them. Doriah was listening to the argument with his brows drawn together, his frown deepening with every word, but as she approached he looked down and smiled at her.

Xiaan felt heat curl in her belly, unfamiliar but not unwelcome. She wet her lips before saying, “Uncle Cham won’t change his mind, will he?”

Doriah shook his head. “If he even thought about it, Auntie’s in there. She’d rip his balls off and throw them at the Fenn.”

Xiaan wrinkled her nose at that mental image, but it was reassuring to hear. She pulled one of her lekku over her shoulder and ran her fingers over it, looking down at the white spirals decorating them. Only the big spirals had been there when…on Zardossa Stix. Xiaan had designed the rest herself when they had come back, smaller spirals and delicate filigree, something that was _hers_. The pattern was repeated on her arms and shoulders, at the small of her back and curving over her hips – the last the most recent after she had turned fifteen.

_The only reason Secchun Fenn wants you_ , she thought, and licked her lips again. Good curial girls were always marked, and besides the Fenn, Xiaan was the only curial female in the fleet. Except Xiaan hadn’t gotten her markings because it was what good curial girls did, she had gotten them because her mother had had them, and because she wanted to feel like her skin was her own – not someone else’s property, to touch and play with and mark as they wanted, _hers_. Something that no one else had ever touched.

“Are you Xiaan Syndulla?”

The voice was male and unfamiliar, with the distinctive upper-caste accent most curiates had and many patricians imitated. Xiaan saw Doriah tense as she turned around to see a Twi’lek boy about her own age standing in the corridor by her, his expression a little awkward.

He had pure white skin marked only by black caste tattoos in geometric patterns that striped around his lekku and curved over the top of his skull; he didn’t wear a headwrap the way Doriah did, though most Twi’lek males didn’t. His clothes were plain but made of fine materials, or at least as fine as you could get in the fleet. He wasn’t wearing a blaster, at least not that Xiaan could see, though that didn’t mean that he wasn’t armed.

“Who are you?” Doriah said when Xiaan didn’t respond to the question.

The boy blinked. “I’m Nawara Fenn, the Fenn prime heir. The Fenn’s my mother.”

Xiaan took a step back towards Doriah, staring at him. “I’m Xiaan,” she made herself say. “What – what are you doing here?”

“My mother thought we should meet,” Nawara said. He frowned at Doriah like he wasn’t sure who he was, then added, “Maybe in private?”

Xiaan shook her head. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Sinthya and Fulcrum both look over, Fulcrum straightening up from where she had been leaning against the wall with her arms crossed over her chest.

“I don’t want to talk to you,” Xiaan said. “I don’t want to marry you.”

Nawara shrugged and said, “What my mother wants, she usually gets.”

Xiaan took another step back, bumping into Doriah. He wrapped an arm around her waist and said, “Not this time.”

Nawara looked at him, his brows drawing together. “Who are you again?”

“I’m Doriah Syndulla. And I think you should go now, Nawara.”

Nawara’s gaze searched his face, probably looking for caste markings; not seeing any, he said, “We’re just going to talk. She doesn’t need a chaperon.”

“I don’t need a chaperon because we’re not going to talk,” Xiaan snapped, even though the words cost her, her breath dragging out with each syllable until she was nearly gasping them. “This is a Syndulla ship. The Fenn name doesn’t have any sway here, and neither does Secchun Fenn. I don’t want to talk to you, so we’re not going to talk. And you’re going to go now. Or I’ll have you thrown off this ship.”

She didn’t wait to see his reaction, just turned her face against Doriah’s chest and let him wrap his arms around her.

“I’d advise that you listen,” she heard Fulcrum say.

“Who are –”

A moment later Xiaan heard the door to Uncle Cham’s stateroom slide open. She risked a look up to see Secchun Fenn striding out, her expression aggrieved. Cham and Alecto followed her; Cham looked at Xiaan and Doriah, then at Nawara, and said, “You brought your son here, Fenn? Captain Secura, make sure the Fenn and her son get back to their own shuttle without any more unplanned detours.”

Secchun Fenn collected Nawara with a glance; the resemblance between them was even more marked side by side. “The fleet will not accept this, Syndulla. You’re making a mistake.”

“Get off my ship, Fenn.”

“Hmmph.” Secchun’s gaze passed thoughtfully over Xiaan before she looked back at Cham. “This isn’t over.”

“Get off before I have you spaced,” Alecto snapped.

“Always a pleasure speaking to you, Alecto,” Secchun said. She strode away as though leaving had been her idea in the first place, her son and Mishaan Secura following her.

Alecto didn’t bother to wait until they were out of sight before she came over to Xiaan and Doriah. Xiaan made herself let go of Doriah and turn all the way around, seeing the concern in Alecto’s eyes.

“Are you all right?”

Xiaan nodded. “He didn’t do anything.”

Alecto scowled, but put a hand on Xiaan’s shoulder, her touch comforting.

“If he had, he’d be on the floor,” Doriah said. His arm was still around Xiaan’s waist; she leaned back against him, listening to the familiar sound of his heartbeat.

Cham was watching them with concern, but after a moment he turned towards Fulcrum. “Can this be done?” he asked her.

She raised a brow. “Naboo?”

“Yes.”

Xiaan felt her heart leap. She straightened up, pulling away from Doriah’s arms to stare up at her uncle. Cham didn’t look at her, his attention focused on Fulcrum.

The Togruta woman ran a hand thoughtfully over her jaw, thinking. “Let me make some calls and see what I can do,” she said finally. “I’ve got a few contacts there. But yes, I think it can be done.”

*

“So,” Ezra said experimentally, “you’re an ISB agent.”

The girl – Sabine, Kanan had said her name was Sabine – raised a dark eyebrow. “Surprised?”

They were in the galley of the _Ghost_ , which turned out to be the diamond-shaped starship Ezra had seen approaching Capital City a few days ago. He had never been on a starship before, so he didn’t know if the _Ghost_ counted as a particularly good example, a perfectly average one, or a bad one. It definitely wasn’t what he was expecting of an Imperial ship.

“I mean – you’re not really, uh –”

“What you think an ISB agent should look like?”

_I think I put my foot in that one._ “Well,” Ezra said, “uh – yeah. I mean no. I mean – I wasn’t really picturing, uh –” He waved a hand vaguely at her, hoping that that would sum it up better than the utter lack of words his brain was failing to produce.

“Never seen a Mandalorian before?”

“Sure, in holos,” Ezra said. “But, uh, shouldn’t you be in an Imperial uniform?”

“I’ve worn my share of Imperial uniforms,” Sabine said. “Not really my favorite thing. Gray’s not my color.”

“Yeah, I’m getting that impression,” Ezra said, his gaze skating over her brightly painted armor, the helmet sitting on the counter beside her. Even her hair was colored blue and amber. Ezra didn’t think he could picture anyone less likely to be an Imperial if he had tried. Except, well – “Everyone on this ship is an Imperial?”

“Except for you.” She took a sip from the cup she was holding.

“Lived on Lothal my whole life,” Ezra said. “The Empire’s been here as long as I remember. Never seen anyone like you guys here.”

Sabine shrugged. “Most people haven’t. Until we come kicking down their doors, anyway.”

“Who –” Ezra grimaced, then decided to just go for it. “Who _are_ you people? I mean, you’re not exactly like other Imperials.”

She lifted her cup slightly. “We’re not exactly anything. We’re a team, a crew – in some ways, a family.”

Ezra couldn’t help looking aside at that, but glanced up in time to see that Sabine had noticed, concern spreading over her face for an instant. “What – what happened to your real family?”

Her gaze slid sideways. “The Empire. What happened to yours?”

Before Ezra could answer – or think of some way to answer – the door to the galley slid open. Kanan put his hands on either side of the doorframe and leaned in, his gaze flickering briefly to Ezra before he looked at Sabine. “He try anything?”

“Are you expecting him to?”

“Wouldn’t be the first time today.” Kanan was back in the same black uniform he had been wearing the night of the parade, his lightsaber hanging off his belt instead of stuck to the back of it the way it had been earlier. The heavy black leathers and armor made him look bulkier, a little less grounded in the universe – like he had stepped out of some historical holodrama. Or out of Ezra’s nightmares.

“In my defense,” Ezra said, “ _you_ were the one who chased me.”

Kanan shrugged. “Keep an eye on anything not nailed down,” he told Sabine. “The kid’s got itchy fingers.”

“Hey, you got your lightsaber back!” Ezra protested.

Sabine’s eyebrows shot up. “You stole an Inquisitor’s lightsaber? Are you suicidal? That’s either the dumbest or the bravest thing I’ve ever –”

“Oh, well, you know,” Ezra said, resisting the urge to preen. “It seemed like a good idea at the time.”

She turned to Kanan. “How is he still alive?”

“He grows on you,” Kanan said. “Like a fungus.”

“Hey!”

“Kid, you should be happy that it was me you tried that trick with and not one of my peers,” Kanan said. “They wouldn’t have been half as nice as I am.”

“ _Kanan_!”

He glanced over his shoulder at the sound of Agent Syndulla’s voice. “I’m coming!” He glanced back at Sabine. “Don’t let him leave.”

“Not a rookie, Kanan,” Sabine said. “Maybe I’ll throw him at Zeb, see if it breaks him out of his sulk.”

“Might not want not try that right now,” Kanan said. Agent Syndulla shouted his name again; he grimaced and said, “Duty calls. This shouldn’t take long. Then we’ll talk.”

This last was directed at Ezra, who couldn’t think of anything to say in response. He contented himself with shrugging; Kanan shrugged back, then stepped away from the door, which slid shut behind him, leaving Ezra and Sabine alone in the galley again.

They looked at each other. Belatedly, Sabine seemed to remember that she was holding a drink and took another sip of it. “He must really like you.”

Ezra shrugged again. “Is he, uh – are all Inquisitors like him?”

“Don’t know,” Sabine said. “He’s the only one I’ve ever met.”

*

_Five years ago_

Lightsabers met with a crackle of energy that was almost lost amidst the other sounds in the training salle – several dozen other Crucible recruits, all of differing skill levels and all of them mishandling their lightsabers in a way that would have made Cin Drallig throw himself from the central spire of the Jedi Temple in despair. Well, if he had still been alive, anyway.

Kanan’s opponent was a big Besalisk who kept trying to use his size to push Kanan out of the circle that marked their small arena. Fighting him had more to do with stepping out of the way and letting him run himself into the ray shields demarcating the boundaries of the circle than it had to do with lightsaber skills. None of which the Besalisk had; frankly, Kanan was surprised that he had so far avoided impaling himself. He had both blades of his saberstaff ignited, apparently figuring that two blades were better than one. Master Drallig, back at the Temple, had beaten it into Kanan’s – Caleb’s – head that that trick only worked if you actually knew what you were doing. The Besalisk decidedly did not.

“Stop running and fight, you coward!”

“Why?” Kanan said. “You getting tired?” He swayed back out of the way of the Besalisk’s clumsy overhand stroke, which crashed into the ray shield behind him, then took two unhurried steps sideways.

“You’re afraid! I can sense –”

Kanan grinned, showing his teeth. “Trust me, pal. What you’re sensing isn’t fear.”

He had so many shields up – every technique that he had ever learned at the Temple, the ones that he had cobbled together in the years since the Purge to try and lock the Force away – that the Besalisk would have to be a hell of a lot stronger in the Force than he actually was to get something out of Kanan. As it was, the guy didn’t even seem to be aware that he was hiding anything.

Kanan stepped aside again as the Besalisk swung at him, rolling his eyes. He hadn’t even bothered to ignite the lightsaber he was holding in one hand, tucked awkwardly under his crossed arms. A couple more impacts with the ray shields and the Besalisk would knock himself out; Kanan barely needed to help.

_This guy’s going to get butchered in the field._

Kanan wouldn’t even need a lightsaber for that, just his blaster. Tempting notion, except he couldn’t tell whether that was _him_ thinking that, or just this place –

He stepped sideways again as the Besalisk spun towards him. The other man’s moves were getting sloppier; he had tired himself out over the past few minutes, and the repeated hits on the ray shields couldn’t be doing him much good. Not that he really had much of a brain anyway, as far as Kanan could tell. The Crucible did most of its recruiting from prisons, as far as Kanan had been able to determine; they weren’t exactly pulling from the best and brightest in the galaxy. Or the most Force-sensitive.

“You want to start any time soon?” he drawled, leaning out of the way of the Besalisk’s next wild swing. “I’m getting bored.”

“You –!” The Besalisk gave up on trying to use his lightsaber and put his head down, charging Kanan with a low-voiced roar.

Kanan stepped unhurriedly out of the way, waiting for the crackle of energy that would follow the Besalisk’s next collision with the ray shields. Instead he heard the faint hiss of the ray shields going down and looked quickly over to see the Besalisk stumble out of the ring and into Patience’s fist.

Her punch took him by surprise; as he reeled back, she kicked out, her boot connecting with his kneecap with a _crack_ that made Kanan wince and sent the Besalisk to the floor. He cried out, the sound lost in the noisy salle, and Patience ground her heel into his fleshy neck. One of her droids drifted over to settle onto the crest of bone on the back of his head, clicking its pincers. Kanan jumped as a second landed on his shoulder, digging its pincers in hard enough that he could feel it even through the leather of his tabards and the thick fabric beneath it.

The face-plates of Patience’s helmet slid back as she looked up at Kanan, smiling a little. “Kill him,” she said.

“No.”

He was half-expecting the crackle of electricity that followed, jolting through his body from her droid’s claws. Kanan gritted his teeth against the way his vision whited out, barely managing to keep his feet until it had passed.

“Kill him,” Patience repeated.

“No,” Kanan spat.

The next electric shock sent him staggering; he almost fell, but managed to stay upright.

Patience stepped forward and put the sharp decorative spike on her lightsaber hilt beneath his chin, tilting his head up. “I can do this all day, Jedi,” she said.

“You’re not the only patient one, Inquisitor,” he spat back.

The corner of her mouth lifted in a smile; it was the only warning Kanan had before her droid’s next electric shock knocked him to his knees. He put his hands out to catch himself, the lightsaber in his right hand clattering against the metal floor.

“Kill him.”

“You want him dead so bad,” Kanan said through his clenched teeth, “you kill him yourself.”

Patience smiled. Kanan braced himself for another jolt, but before it came he felt the pressure on his shoulder release suddenly. He heard the droid make a faint chittering protest – a sound he had never heard it make before – and turned his head as it went flying sideways into another set of ray shields. It hung suspended for a moment, energy crackling around it as that circle’s combatants looked over in surprise, then slid to the floor, apparently dead.

Its companion jerked up from the Besalisk’s skull, clacking its pincers. Patience’s smile fell away and she said coldly, “Hunter.”

“Patience.”

Kanan flinched as the Hunter’s hand found the back of his neck and rested there. He felt his grip tighten on the lightsaber hilt, looking up to see Patience glaring over his head at the Hunter. He felt the Force strain under the pressure of their mental battle, a passing pressure that made him grit his teeth. He saw Patience bite her lip, staring unblinking at the Hunter.

The Hunter’s grip tightened on the back of his neck until it was hard enough that Kanan knew he would find bruises there later. He folded his free hand into a fist, his knuckles scraping across the metal floor. All around the salle bouts were coming to a stop as the combatants felt the disturbance in the Force; Kanan dropped his gaze so that he wouldn’t have to see them staring at him, wondering about the two trainers having their psychic tug-of-war over the Jedi recruit.

He felt the moment snap and couldn’t help his own reactive flinch as Patience reeled back, the backlash reverberating through the Force.

The Hunter hauled Kanan to his feet, his fingers digging into his neck as he did so. At some unseen gesture Patience’s remaining droid released the Besalisk and drifted over to land on her shoulder, clicking its pincers menacingly at the Hunter.

“Get up.”

With a wary glance between the two trainers, the Besalisk pushed himself upright, retrieving his lightsaber from where he had dropped it when Patience had knocked him down. Patience’s upper lip curled back in a sneer, but she didn’t protest.

Kanan felt the Hunter’s attention shift slightly, then the Pau’an raised his free hand. Two more ray shields fell; their occupants looking startled by this turn of events. He let go of Kanan with a shove, sending him stumbling forward with a whisper in his ear that made Kanan flinch again.

At his gesture, the four other trainees – an Aqualish, a white-skinned Arkanian, a Duros, and a Gungan – approached cautiously. The Hunter looked at Patience and said, “Care to join them?”

“I’ve earned my name,” she said just before the face plates on her helmet closed, then stepped away without looking back, pausing to lean down and pick up the droid the Hunter had thrown against the ray shields. Kanan saw her stroke one finger down the back of its chassis before a new set of ray shields sprang up around him and the five other trainees.

He had no other warning. The Aqualish charged him with a warbling yell, swinging his already ignited saberstaff; Kanan dodged beneath both blades and slammed a kick into the other man’s knee, grabbing his upper arm as he stumbled and throwing himself over his back, another kick slamming into the jaw of the Duros. He heard more lightsabers ignite around him, and spun, releasing his grip on the Aqualish to send him flying into the ray shields. The Hunter had upped the power; the Aqualilsh hit with a sickening crackle that lit up his entire body before he crumpled to the floor.

The Arkanian woman swept in, only one blade of her lightsaber ignited, with the Gungan right behind her. Kanan dodged, aware of the Duros back on his feet and the Besalisk hanging back, apparently waiting for the opportune moment to strike. As the Gungan pinwheeled his weapon, the blades spinning entirely around the round guard surrounding the grip, Kanan felt the Force murmur in his ear.

For the first time that day he ignited the lightsaber he was holding. Before the Gungan could react, Kanan slashed a fast X in the air, already whirling aside as the two blades on Gungan’s lightsaber abruptly winked out, the round hilt clattering to the floor in four pieces.

The Duros was coming around on Kanan’s other side. As the Arkanian woman swung at him, Kanan deactivated his lightsaber and grabbed her by the wrist, slamming his knee up to break her grip on the weapon. He kicked it out of the way and swung her around into the ray shields, releasing her just before she collided with them, the sparks of electricity sending the Duros jumping back to collide with the Gungan. The moment of confusion knocked them both off their feet and made the Besalisk jump back.

Kanan gave into the faint whisper of temptation and grabbed for the Force, yanking with his free hand until their lightsabers pulled free of their grips. Both trainees grabbed for them; Kanan ignited his lightsaber and slashed through the hilts while they were still in the air, sending the halves falling to the floor with a loud clatter. He looked up at the Besalisk and raised an eyebrow; nervous, the Besalisk took a step back – straight into the ray shields.

The Hunter waited until he had passed out before he dropped the shields. He caught hold of the back of Kanan’s neck again, shaking him with that now familiar almost-fondness. “Feeling soft-hearted, Jedi?”

Kanan let his breath out. “You can’t learn if you’re dead,” he made himself say. “And you want them to learn, don’t you?”

“The lesson wasn’t for them.” The Hunter released him and reached over his back for his own lightsaber, igniting both blades as he walked over to the Gungan and Duros, who had picked themselves up off the floor and were standing still with hangdog expressions.

“Wait!” Kanan said, jerking forwards, but before he could do anything – reach for the Force, for his own lightsaber – the scarlet blades flashed and two headless bodies fell to the floor, the heads rolling aside.

The Hunter turned back to him, deactivating his lightsaber and replacing it on his back. “The Empire has no use for weakness,” he said.

“You didn’t have to do that!” Kanan said.

The Hunter’s backhand sent him staggering sideways. An instant later he grabbed the back of Kanan’s neck and pulled him upright. Kanan grabbed at his hand, trying to pull free before the Hunter shook him hard enough that his teeth rattled.

“Don’t forget why you’re here, Jedi,” he said. “Don’t forget you volunteered.”

*

Kanan punched a wall.

The hard metal split his knuckles and he cursed, stepping back and sucking at the blood on his hand. The pain didn’t help anything, and he paced back and forth across his tiny cell, hating himself and the Hunter and the Inquisition and the Empire. After a moment he dropped his hand from his mouth to strip off the vambraces he was still wearing, throwing them across the room with a clatter as they bounced off the wall and hit his narrow bunk before landing on the floor.

The cells in the trainees’ dormitory weren’t soundproof and Kanan knew that someone else must have heard that, but there was enough ambient sound in the Crucible that a couple of crashes would go more or less unnoticed. There was a Zygerrian boy at the other end of the corridor who spent half an hour every night screaming himself hoarse, to the shouts and jeers of the other trainees, and a Twi’lek girl in the cell next to his who cried to herself in the night. Another pair of trainees – Kanan could have found out who if he had cared enough to do so – had sex a few nights a week, usually accompanied by an unnerving combination of angry yelling and loud moaning. Kanan throwing things was nothing.

Suddenly exhausted, he put his hands on the bunk’s metal headboard and stared down at them. His knuckles had already scabbed over, but his hands were clenched so tightly that the fresh marks stood out even against his amber-colored skin. He could sense the Force all around him – the faint warmth of the light side like a secret tucked close to his skin, the irrepressible weight of the dark side all around him, buried so deep within the foundations of the complex that if he slipped for even an instant it was all he could feel. It was waiting for him, and Kanan knew that it wanted nothing better than to swallow him whole.

He fisted one hand and slammed it against the headboard, then turned away, clenching his hands at his sides and trying to steady his breathing. _Damn the Empire, and damn the Hunter, and damn the Crucible_ –

_Damn me for letting myself come here._

Kanan scrubbed his hands over his face, trying not to flinch at the lack of his beard. At least the cuts had healed. He wanted Hera; he wanted Master Billaba; he wanted to not be here. He wanted one thing – anything – to be under his control, not to remain as the plaything of a sadistic Inquisitor who took his pleasure from making Kanan do whatever he wanted.

One thing. Anything.

He looked back at the bunk, where the lightsaber he had taken from the Quarren he had killed that first day was lying.

It was more or less the same as all the other lightsabers Kanan had seen in the Crucible – double-bladed with a round guard that fully enclosed the hilt, around which the blades could spin if you had never actually bothered to learn how to use a lightsaber and wanted to try and make up for that lack. Kanan had been here long enough to see that that trick was more likely to backfire on the bearer than it was to be of any use in a fight; on his second day, one of the other trainees had managed to cut his own head off, which was something Kanan could have lived without seeing. Kanan wanted to carry a lightsaber like that slightly less than he wanted to keep breathing.

“To hell with this,” Kanan said under his breath, then strode back to the bunk to pluck the lightsaber off it.

He sat down cross-legged on the floor and put the lightsaber down in front of him. Resting his hands on his knees, he closed his eyes and tried to remember how to do this. It had been the better part of a decade since the last time he had tried, and that had been in the heart of one of the Jedi outpost temples, not in a stronghold of the dark side.

He could feel the dark side all around him, the seething misery of the Crucible and the shadowed echoes of some tragedy that had happened here a long time ago a strangling presence in the Force. Kanan could feel it clawing at him, wanting to drag him down into the darkness and never release him.

_I am a Jedi. I am a being of light. I am a child of the Force_ –

Eventually, Kanan felt his breathing slow, his simmering rage smoothing away and the fear that he had lived with for almost half his life fading to nothing. It was easier than it should have been after so long, but the Force sat heavy here, and all the Jedi were was the Force made flesh. When he opened himself fully to the Force, there was no dark side, no light side – just him and the universe and the lightsaber in front of him.

He didn’t have to open his eyes to see it rise up into the air in front of him, breaking apart into its components. Two crystals, Kanan saw, both red. He felt a moment’s surprise at the faint murmur in the Force as he focused on them, felt them flicker at the edge of his comprehension as they tuned to him, the red starting to bleed out into the Force –

_No!_

Unvoiced as it was, the thought came so strongly that it almost threw him out of his meditative trance. He felt the color flicker, then slowly it seeped back into the crystal. _No. Thank you, but no. I don’t want to die, and they’ll kill me for that._

The rounded components of the guard he discarded, letting them settle lightly on the floor. The hilt that remained was about the same length as the lightsaber he had left hidden back on the Ghost, long enough that he would be able to fit both hands comfortably around it but not too big to use one-handed. One of the two crystals joined the guard components on the floor, and Kanan spread out the remainder of the material in a long thin line, picturing them in his mind. One of the ends would be unfinished, and he paused to scrounge mentally through the components of the guard before pulling it apart entirely with his mind, shaping the metal to form a pommel.

_That will do._

It wouldn’t look anything like his own lightsaber, but Kanan didn’t want it to. He felt through the Force for any flaws in the construction; finding none, he brought the components together with his mind, feeling them click together as though they had always meant to be in this form.

He opened his eyes to find the lightsaber hanging in mid-air before him. It fell into his palm as he held one hand out, fitting so naturally that it was hard to remember what it had looked like before. Kanan wrapped both hands around the hilt as he got to his feet, moving away from the discarded components so that he would be less likely to step on anything. He made a few passes with the hilt, immeasurably glad not to have the bulky encumbrance of the round guard there, then took a breath and ignited the blade.

Red. Still red, of course, but it didn’t hurt to look at, and the hilt didn’t feel like an alien thing in his hand anymore, as if its reconstruction had cleansed it of all the impurities that had come to it. Kanan let out his breath, some of that meditative calm still remaining to him even here in the graveyard of the Jedi, and deactivated the lightsaber. He put it down on the bed and leaned down to collect the discarded components, not sure what he was going to do with them, then paused as his fingers brushed over the second crystal.

Kanan let the other components fall forgotten to the floor as he straightened upright, holding the crystal up to the cell’s dim light. It had been red when it had come out of the lightsaber, he knew it had.

Now it was as blue as a Coruscant sky.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I commissioned the lovely [Lorna-Ka](lorna-ka.tumblr.com.) to illustrate [Imperial Kanan and Hera](http://bedlamsbard.tumblr.com/post/139458113763/i-am-an-imperial-officer-i-sacrificed-too-much-to), and she did an absolutely gorgeous job.
> 
> As always, love and grateful thanks to my beta Xena, who continuously goes above and beyond.
> 
> I do daily progress reports over on Tumblr, under the tag "[daily fic snippet](http://bedlamsbard.tumblr.com/tagged/daily%20fic%20snippet)," if you want to keep track of what I'm working on or get a hint of what's happening in the next chapter or two.


	13. Flowers of Ryloth

Cham was double-checking his field kit when Mishaan Secura cornered him in his stateroom. She waited respectfully for him to invite her inside, but once he had shut the door behind her, she squared her shoulders as if preparing for a fight and said, “General, I think this is very ill-advised.”

Cham closed his bag and set it on top of his desk, working his stiff arm. He’d taken the sling off for the mission, which Doctor Themarsa had made disparaging noises about, but he wanted both hands free in the field. “What is, Captain?”

He had told Mishaan that he would be away from the fleet for a few standard days at most, with the understanding unspoken that if he didn’t return after that then he probably wasn’t going to. She knew the protocol for that.

“This mission,” she said. “That you’re going on it personally. With the fleet in its current state –” She hesitated for an instant, and Cham waited patiently, even though he could feel his guts clenching at the delay. Not that there was one, not yet. They still had time.

“With the fleet in its current state,” Mishaan finally went on slowly, “I don’t think it’s wise for you to leave at the moment, especially on a – a personal matter.”

“A personal matter?” Cham said, unable to keep ice from creeping into his voice. What he hadn’t told Mishaan was the reason for his departure, nor did he intend to. There was fleet business and there was family business, and this was the latter.

Mishaan tucked her hands behind her back, her spine rod-straight, and raised her chin. “I’m no fool, General. I know that that – that that Togruta woman, that Fulcrum, has been in and out of the fleet for weeks now and that she’s the one who brought you word about your daughter.”

“I told you why I went to Thyferra,” Cham said, watching her with narrowed eyes.

“But not why you took part of the fleet out without telling me or anyone in the Synedrion,” Mishaan said. “Or why you sent our people off with this Fulcrum the other day, including your heir.”

“Doriah isn’t my heir,” Cham said, maybe more sharply than he should have, since he saw Mishaan’s lekku tighten in response to the words.

“I won’t pretend to know how curiates do things, General, but what I do know is that half this fleet thinks of him as the Syndulla heir,” Mishaan said. “Even if you can bring your daughter back, the fleet will never accept her. Not as Syndulla.”

“What I do with my family or my clan is none of your concern, Captain Secura,” Cham said, managing at the last second not to put any emphasis on Mishaan’s surname.

Her jaw tightened. “You are not just Syndulla,” she said. “You haven’t been just Syndulla for more than fifteen years now, since the Separatists came to Ryloth. You are Ryloth. And you put the fleet at risk for your personal vendetta. The girl is _gone_ , General. You must know that. She’s an Imperial now, one of Palpatine’s tools, not one of us –”

“Hera is my daughter,” Cham snapped, fury briefly overriding his better sense. “You speak out of turn, Mishaan.”

“You cannot put yourself in danger like this!” Mishaan said. “Don’t you know that people in this fleet talk? This isn’t about your family or your clan, it’s not even about this ship. This is Ryloth’s fate you gamble with, the fate of our people! You can’t set that aside for one girl, even if she’s your blood. Not for an Imperial.”

“Your parents were at the colony on Zardossa Stix, weren’t they?” Cham said, making himself keep his voice calm. “Your younger sister and her family? Your wife’s family?”

“That has nothing to do with –”

“Do you mean to tell me that given the opportunity you would do nothing to find out their fates? To discover what became of them after the Empire came to the colony? No matter what it cost?”

Mishaan’s nostrils flared like a nervous gutkurr’s, her lekku so tight that Cham could have snapped them with one hand, but all she said was, “I am not Syndulla.”

“And because I am I should let my daughter, my sisters’ children, the other Twi’leks of the colony go forgotten? They are our people too, Mishaan.”

“I didn’t say that,” she snapped. “You have people who can do this for you, General. Let them do it. Stay here, be Syndulla, lead this fleet. Name an heir, for love of the gods –”

“You’re starting to sound like Secchun Fenn,” Cham said softly.

Mishaan’s gaze cut sideways, so quickly that if he hadn’t been looking for it he would have missed it. “At least the Fenn hasn’t been running off chasing ghosts at the word of some outsider.”

“No,” Cham agreed. “But I can’t think of anything else she’s done, either.”

He picked up his bag and slung it over his shoulder. “We’ll finish this discussion later, Captain Secura.”

Mishaan’s face had taken on the mulish expression of one who knows that she has done wrong, but she went to the door without further protest. “At least tell me you aren’t going alone, General,” she said. “And not just with that outlander, either.”

“No,” Cham said. “I’m taking my family.”

*

Seven hours after it had started, Hera left Agent Kallus’s meeting with a pounding headache and a nearly-irrepressible urge to mar a spotless service record by stabbing a senior officer through the neck. She didn’t even dare do so much as rub her temples while in sight of Agent Kallus, though, and by the time she and Kanan left the headquarters building her throat was bone-dry and she was so stiff from tension that she could feel it in her lekku.

Kanan didn’t even look at her until they were back in the hangar, but Hera could see that his fists were white-knuckled at his sides, his expression so grim that it made every stormtrooper who looked at them glance hastily away. Only after the doors had shut behind them did he touch a hand lightly to the small of her back; Hera stopped to lean into him, breathing hard, and he wrapped an arm around her waist.

“Are you all right?” he asked, his voice low.

“I’m just tired,” Hera whispered back. “I haven’t slept much these past few days, just a few hours after the bombing, after you came back.” She pressed her fingers to her forehead, rubbing up beneath her flight cap, and added, “I also can’t remember the last time I ate anything or drank something other than caf, so I should probably do that.”

“Yeah, probably.” Kanan pressed a quick kiss to her forehead, then took her hand as they made their way across the hangar to the _Ghost_.

Beneke and several agents from Agent Kallus’s task force had holoconferenced in from various places around the galaxy – Beneke from Naboo, the others from wherever they were currently stationed. Hera had recognized one of them from the joint operation on Felucia she and Kanan had been a part of four years ago, just after he had come back from the Crucible, but the others had been strangers to her. The entire seven hours had been an ordeal of new information – neither Hera nor Kanan had ever been read into any of the ongoing operations involving rebel groups that operated outside of a single system – as well as periodically repeating the events of the previous evening, Kallus grilling both of them on everything they remembered. If he had noticed that they were both talking around unpleasant truths, at least he hadn’t accused them of it to their faces.

_Probably saving it for when he brings us both up on charges_ , Hera thought wearily, rubbing at her forehead again. The only good thing about the ordeal was that they hadn’t holoconferenced in any other Inquisitors; she had seen Kanan tense in anticipation when the first ISB agents began to appear. So far, it seemed, there was no reason for the Fulcrum operation to require the presence of another Inquisitor, not with Kanan’s secret about the Togruta woman’s skill with the Force still secret.

Hera waited to unstrap her cap until they were inside the _Ghost_ , Kanan reaching out to wave a hand in the direction of the control panel and close the ramp up behind them. There were dents in her skin around her jaw where the strap had dug in; she wasn’t used to wearing it this long. Hera pulled her goggles down around her neck and paused to pull her cap off all the way, fumbling the ends of her lekku out from the openings.

She let out a sigh of relief as the pressure on her skull eased, letting her cap dangle from one hand as she rubbed the other over her head, back to the base of her lekku. “I need,” she said, “a shower, a hot meal, and to sleep for a –”

“Hey, you’re back!”

Hera let out her breath, closing her eyes, “And to forget you kidnapped a child.”

“Kidnapped is such a strong word,” Kanan said.

“Yes, if you’d kidnapped him, we could give him back with one of those form letters the Academies use,” Hera said. She looked up at the landing outside the gunner’s bubble, where Sabine and Ezra were both hanging over the railing looking down at them.

“Were you in that meeting the whole time?” Sabine asked. “You know Zeb and I could have –”

“Yes, that’s exactly what I needed, Zeb to throw Agent Kallus through a wall in front of the six senior agents holoconferencing in,” Hera said.

“Trust me,” Kanan said, “you didn’t miss anything. Well, you almost missed a murder.”

“He’s joking,” Hera added hastily, seeing Ezra’s eyes widen, his expression torn between delight and horror.

“Only Minister Tua probably would have cried,” Kanan said. “She seems like the type.”

“Tua’s pretty tough,” Ezra said thoughtfully. “The guy before her, Keto, he was kind of a wimp. He only lasted a year before he had a nervous breakdown or something and quit. And the guy before _him_ got black-bagged by the bucketheads.” He paused. “Uh, sorry? I guess that’s you guys.”

“I stand corrected,” Kanan said. “Tua probably could have handled it.”

“So the murder’s going to be tomorrow, then?” Sabine grinned down at them.

“No one’s murdering anyone,” Hera said, pulling herself up the ladder. She passed the two teenagers on her way up to the cockpit, Kanan just behind her.

He paused on the landing to say, “Any trouble?” to Sabine; Hera glanced down in time to see her roll her eyes.

“The kid’s all right.”

“I’m right here, you know,” Ezra put in.

Kanan ignored him. “Zeb?”

“Not even a finger out of his cabin.”

“Great,” Kanan muttered.

His voice faded as the cockpit door shut behind Hera. She paused in her cabin to toss her cap in the general direction of the bunk, then stripped out of her uniform jacket and hung it up with more care – the last thing she wanted was to be written up for showing up with a wrinkled uniform. She knew from her Academy days that Agent Kallus was more than petty enough to do so, even to an established agent.

Kanan and the two teenagers were already in the galley when Hera reached it. He passed her a bowl of whatever was on the stovetop as she came in, and she didn’t even bother to sit down to eat, just leaned against the counter and spooned food into her mouth. She looked up halfway through the bowl to see Ezra watching her and Kanan warily. Kanan was already on his second bowl of what had turned out to be chili.

“So this Agent Kallus,” Sabine said, apparently taking Hera’s silence as permission to speak. “He seems like a real piece of work.”

“He’s senior to you,” Hera reminded her, not that she thought Sabine particularly cared. Sabine had more or less given up on Imperial protocol at about the same time she had tried to blow the Imperial Academy on Mandalore to kingdom come; it was why she had ended up on the _Ghost_ with them.

Sabine shrugged. “If he even condescends to talk to me, I’ll eat my gloves.”

“I hope you like the taste of nerf-leather,” Hera said, and spooned more chili into her mouth. “Kallus will probably tell you off for being out of uniform.”

Sabine raised an eyebrow. “I find the paint stains add flavor.”

“So, uh,” Ezra said. “What are you guys, uh – doing here? On Lothal? This isn’t the sort of planet where anything actually…happens.” He let the words trail off, glancing between them.

Hera paused with her spoon between the bowl and her mouth, turning her head to look at Kanan. He met her eyes for only an instant before dropping his gaze, waving his own spoon as he said vaguely, “Oh, you know. Bad luck.”

“Yeah, it’d have to be to end up here.” Ezra eyed him thoughtfully; if Hera had been less tired she might have asked what Kanan had said to get him to come back to the Imperial Complex with him, but as it was she just scraped her spoon around the bottom of her bowl to get the last of the chili before turning to dump both in the sink.

She got herself a glass of water and drank most of it in two gulps, then sipped the rest more slowly, only half paying attention to the conversation.

“So,” Sabine said eventually. “We’re staying? We’re not being reassigned?”

“We should be so lucky,” Hera said, leaning over to refill her water glass.

“We’re stuck here for now, since there’s nothing else lined up for us,” Kanan said. He yawned into his hand and added, “And we’ll go over it in the morning, since I don’t want to repeat this twice for Zeb. And I’m so tired I don’t think I’d get it straight right now, anyway.”

Sabine eyed them, then nodded eventually. “Both of you look like you’re going to fall over.”

Kanan shrugged. Hera didn’t say anything, just sipped her water.

Sabine jerked her thumb at Ezra, who flinched at the gesture, his right hand starting in the direction of the energy slingshot on his left wrist before he stilled himself. “What about him?”

Kanan blinked. “What about –?”

“If he’s staying, then where’s he staying? We only have four cabins and Zeb locked himself in one of them.”

Kanan put his bowl down to rub both hands over his face, while Hera just blinked, trying to process that. She was so tired that she felt as though her head was filled with cotton fluff. This had never been a problem when she had first started six years ago, when taking Kanan onboard the _Ghost_ had been the most daring thing she had ever done in her entire life. She had never expected to have a crew.

“He can go in with Zeb,” she said eventually. “Maybe tonight’s not the best time to break that news. Um –”

Kanan usually slept in her cabin, but Hera knew instinctively that he wouldn’t want someone else in his. Putting Ezra in with Sabine was out of the question, even if the lower bunk in her cabin hadn’t been ripped out years ago, and there was only one bunk in Hera’s.

Sabine looked between them, then said, “He can sleep in my room tonight. I’ll sleep in yours and you two can sleep in Kanan’s?” At the last second she turned the words into a question.

Ezra said quickly, “It’s fine, I can sleep anywhere, seriously. I slept in an old drainpipe last night.”

Sabine and Hera both turned to stare at him, Sabine looking about as appalled as Hera felt, but Kanan just shrugged again and said, “Yeah, I’ve done that. Trust me, the bunk’s more comfortable.”

Sabine transferred her appalled look to him, starting to say, “Why would you –” before Kanan dumped his dirty bowl into the sink and said, “You’re probably going to want fresh sheets on Hera’s bed, then.”

“Um, yeah.” Sabine made a face. “Definitely. I can hear what you two do in there, I don’t need to sleep on it too.”

“I’ll get the sheets.” Kanan turned towards Hera as she blinked tiredly at him, leaning down to press a kiss to her forehead. “You take your shower.”

“Yeah.” She kissed his cheek, then covered another yawn. “Do you think if I go to bed, Agent Kallus will be gone when I wake up in the morning?”

“Maybe we’ll get lucky and Fulcrum will blow something up on the other side of the galaxy,” Kanan said.

“As long as it’s nowhere I know,” Hera said.

*

Starlines steadied in the viewport as the _Aegis_ came out of hyperspace. Ahsoka immediately flipped the ship’s transponder on; the first thing she had seen was the massive shape of an Imperial star destroyer directly in front of her, blocking her view of the planet.

Xiaan Syndulla, perched in the co-pilot’s seat beside her, made a small sound of distress.

“It’s all right,” Ahsoka said automatically. “There’s no reason for them to think that we’re anything other than what we seem to be; they probably aren’t even scanning individual ships. Too much traffic.”

Naboo might be small compared to an ecumenopolis like Coruscant or Taris, but it was still the sector capital, and the _Aegis_ was far from the only ship that had just come out of hyperspace. They slid beneath the dark belly of the star destroyer to spiral down towards the familiar green surface of the planet, joining the other lines of incoming space traffic. Next to Ahsoka, Xiaan leaned forward, her eyes widening and her lips parting slightly in delight.

“When was the last time you were dirtside?” Ahsoka asked her.

Xiaan tore her gaze away from the planet to look at her. “I don’t remember.” She bit her lip. “I don’t think I’ve set foot on a planet since Doriah and I…” She let the words trail off, dropping her gaze to the dashboard. Eventually she finished, “Got back.”

She pushed her fingers nervously against the knee of her trousers, then added, “The Baron – our master – used to travel all the time. I never saw any of the places we went, though, I never left the yacht. He took Doriah with him sometimes, he liked…having him there.”

Ahsoka looked at her sharply, but Xiaan’s gaze was turned aside, fixed on the planet as it grew larger in the viewport. “It’s beautiful,” she said.

“One of my best friends was from Naboo,” Ahsoka said. “It’s as beautiful on the surface as it is from up here. Or at least it was. I haven’t been in years.”

They passed through the planet’s atmosphere and Ahsoka angled them towards Theed. Naboo had remained relatively untouched by the Empire, and every kilometer they passed felt like the ghost of the past, virtually unchanged since the Clone Wars.

She glanced over her shoulder as the cockpit door slid open, admitting Cham Syndulla. He said, “We’re landing in the spaceport?”

“One of the smaller ones in the city, not the big one below the palace,” Ahsoka said. “The _Aegis_ isn’t a shuttle; if I land it anywhere other than a spaceport it will get too much attention. Coruscant I could manage it, but not Theed.”

Cham nodded, though he was still frowning. “All right. I trust your judgment.”

It was night on Naboo, past midnight already. The lights of the city were spread out around them, the palace brighter than the rest – there was some kind of event going on there tonight, and most of the Imperial officials and senior officers onworld would be attending. There would be a much smaller presence at the Imperial Complex as a result, but it meant that Ahsoka was depending on a contact whom she had never met before instead of on Sabé, who wouldn’t be able to get away.

She brought the _Aegis_ down into an empty bay in a small, almost entirely automated spaceport in one of the industrial parts of the city. Xiaan got up to join Cham and the others in the back of the ship as Ahsoka set the boards on the standby; there was a good chance that they might have to make a quick getaway. Sinthya Syndulla had agreed to stay with the ship while the rest of them were gone, though she wasn’t happy about it. If things got bad, she could fly in and pick them up.

Or, alternately, if things got _really_ bad, she could take the _Aegis_ and go. Ahsoka was considering that the worst case scenario.

She picked up her poncho and pulled it over her head as she followed Xiaan and Cham out of the cockpit. The others were waiting in the small lounge, along with QT-KT. Sinthya was leaning back against the holotable with her arms crossed over her chest, her jaw set, but she had stopped arguing that someone else should be left behind a few hours ago.

“Ready?” Ahsoka said to Cham.

He looked at Xiaan, who was standing by Doriah’s side. “Are you certain you want to do this?” he asked. “You can stay with Sinthya if you’ve changed your mind.”

She shook her head. “I’m sure, Uncle. This was my idea, and I’m the slicer here, after all.”

Cham sighed, glanced at Alecto, and said, “We’re ready.”

*

The Red Star swept into Flower’s changing room as Flower was fixing her makeup before leaving, throwing herself into a chair and tossing a box of candies in Flower’s direction.

Flower dropped the makeup brush in order to catch it, sending a light dusting of glittery eyeshadow across the top of her vanity.

“Sorry,” Star said. “Frith brought those for me, but you know I can’t eat them. You’d think an ISB agent could remember what is and isn’t poisonous to Zeltrons.”

“It’s all right.” It wasn’t as though her vanity wasn’t a mess anyway, the way it always got this far into an evening, since Flower had to come in to clean up and fix her makeup between each client. She had already had three tonight, making her glad for the outcall she was going to next; not only would she not have to sleep with anyone on this particular occasion, she would be out of the House for the rest of the evening. Star wasn’t so lucky.

Flower pried open the lid of the box to find sugared vyla flowers inside. She closed it again and set it down on her vanity, saying, “You should give those to Jewel, you know she likes them. Or I bet Opal would appreciate them.”

“I’d rather give them to you.”

“If I eat them, I can’t kiss you,” Flower pointed out, leaning down to do just that. She felt Star smile against her mouth before she deepened the kiss.

“You make a fair point,” Star said when she eventually pulled back. Her green lipstick had already been smeared when she had come in; it was worse now, but Star didn’t look like she cared.

“Are you done for the night?” Flower asked her.

Star shook her head. “That rat bastard’s coming by in an hour for his weekly abuse session.”

“You’re going to have to be more specific about which rat bastard,” Flower said, turning away so that she could go back to putting her eye makeup on. In theory it didn’t matter if she was properly made up or not before going out, since she wasn’t really meeting a client, but if she tried to leave the House looking anything less than perfect Mother would have it out of her hide.

She saw Star grimace in the mirror. “Does it really matter?”

“Not really.” Flower screwed the cap back onto the eyeshadow container and set the brush aside, considering herself in the mirror before adjusting the set of her headband by a centimeter. “Take Opal with you.”

Star’s eyebrows shot up. “I thought you actually liked the kid.”

“I do. Watching someone other than me will be good for her; maybe she’ll have a taste for you.”

“Hmph.” Star checked the chrono, then groaned, levering herself out of the chair. “I need to clean up, then I’ll hunt up the kid. You gonna be back late?”

“I don’t know.” Flower leaned over to kiss her again. “Give the candy to Jewel or the Sweet Singer.”

“Singer’s not supposed to have sweets right now,” Star said, rolling her eyes.

“Then he’ll be particularly grateful to have them.” Flower patted her cheek. “I’m sure you won’t mind having him owe you a favor.”

Star just grinned and shook her head, collecting the box of candy as she went. She kissed Flower’s cheek, then swept out of the room, the scent of her perfume lingering behind her and clashing with Flower’s.

Flower checked herself in the mirror again, pursing her lips, then turned away and picked up her cloak and her case. She took the back corridors through the house; even from here the press of sound from the club was audible, since there was a band playing tonight instead of just a few musicians or one of the boys or girls.

Even though she didn’t really have the time to spare, she put her head into the practice room where Opal had gone to hide after Flower had finished with her last client. Agent Kantha had taken full advantage of the fact that he had two girls for the price of one, even if he was forbidden from laying hands on one of them.

Opal was sitting in the corner of the room furthest from the door, still in the same clothes she had been wearing then, with her hands buried in her rumpled hair. She raised a tear-streaked face as the door opened.

Flower dropped her cloak and case and went over to crouch down in front of her. “Hey,” she said. “It’s all right –”

Opal just shook her head mutely.

Flower pulled her into an embrace, feeling the girl’s thin frame shake with sobs. She rocked Opal as she wept, part of her hoping that the girl’s tears weren’t staining the barely there shoulder of her gown and another part calculating how late she was going to be, but she wasn’t going to leave Opal in this state if she could help it.

She was aware of the door opening behind her, of Star’s familiar step on the hardwood floor as she came over and knelt beside them. Star put an arm around Opal’s shoulders to transfer her from Flower’s embrace to her own, as aware of Flower of the chrono counting down to their next appointments.

“Go,” she mouthed at Flower over Opal’s head. “I’ll take care of her.”

Flower nodded, leaning in to press a soft kiss to the side of Opal’s forehead. “I’ll be back as soon as I can, all right?” she told the girl, and felt Opal nod a little. “Good girl.”

She kissed Star’s cheek, then rose and recovered her cloak and case. She stood for a moment looking back at the two women, then left, the door sliding shut behind her with a decisively final sounding _click_.

*

_I hope Siren didn’t panic and back out_ , Ahsoka thought. That was always a risk when asking a source to do something other than simply pass along information, which was dangerous enough as it was. Before now she had stayed away from Naboo; the Imperial presence on the world was far too great and the reward far too small to merit the risk. This, though – Hera Syndulla was only one being, and an Imperial officer at that, but if they could get into the ISB systems, the missing Twi’leks from the Zardossa Stix colony would be only the tip of the iceberg as far as intel went. The Rebellion _needed_ that, needed it badly.

They had left the industrial neighborhood where the spaceport was and into a residential one where the streets were wide and airy, lined with tall townhouses and the narrow, neatly kept decorative gardens on either side of the steps that were popular this season. It would have been lovely in the daylight, even in the moonlight; but it was an overcast night, mist rising from the nearby canal and the wet air cold enough to make Ahsoka’s teeth ache.

“You should stay here,” she told Cham as their small group paused beneath one of the decorative overhangs that during the rainy and summer seasons would protect passing pedestrians. “The contact might spook if they see a group.”

Cham hesitated for a moment, then said, “I would feel more comfortable if you took someone with you. This is an Imperial world; no one should go anywhere alone. I know you trust you your contact, but this could be a trap.” He tilted his head at his wife, who raised one dark eyebrow in response.

If she had been ten years younger, Ahsoka would have said, _I can handle myself_ , but instead she just nodded as Alecto Syndulla separated herself from the others. The two women went on silently, Alecto’s hand on her blaster and Ahsoka letting her awareness of the Force spread out around her.

It was easy to slip off the main street and into the back streets that ran behind the townhouses, which servants and services used to stay out of sight. High walls rose on both sides, blocking off garages or gardens; Ahsoka kept an eye on the house numbers until she saw the one she wanted.

“I’m going to go in alone,” she told Alecto. “Stay outside the wall for now. This shouldn’t take long.”

Alecto frowned. “And if it’s a trap?”

“I can handle a few stormtroopers,” Ahsoka told her, letting the corner of her mouth quirk up.

She saw something that might have been a grin flicker briefly over the older woman’s face before Ahsoka turned away, going up to the garden’s back door. She could sense a single presence inside the garden; the house itself was empty. Ahsoka knocked softly on the door and said, “It’s a long way to Alderaan.”

“Three score parsecs and ten, but you can get there by starlight.” The voice was young and female, with a faint Rylothean accent. The speaker stepped back as the door slid open, revealing herself to be a blue-skinned Twi’lek woman in her early twenties, beautifully made up beneath the hood of her cloak. Her eyes glinted in the shadows.

“Siren?” Ahsoka checked, and waited for the woman to nod before she went on, “I’m Fulcrum. Do you have it?”

“Yes.” The woman crouched down to flip open the catch on the case at her feet, slipping a hand beneath the lining at the top to pull out two sheets of thin filament flimsiplast, each with a perfect handprint captured on it. Ahsoka reached out to take them from her, but Siren hesitated, her expression torn before she relinquished them. As she half-turned away to close her case again, Ahsoka saw her face in profile, her hood starting to fall back from over her lekku, and thought, _wait_.

“What’s your name?”

Siren froze, long blue hands stilling on the clasp of her case. She looked slowly up at Ahsoka and said, “You’re not supposed to ask me that.”

“I know.” Ahsoka crouched down beside her, feeling the woman’s fine tremor as she pushed the hood all the way off her head to reveal her lekku, which were decorated with stylized white flowers that spiraled around each one from base to tip.

Siren looked at her, then away. “I’m the Flower of Ryloth,” she said.

“I meant your real name.” When she hesitated, Ahsoka added, “Your clan, maybe?”

“My clan is gone,” Siren said, her voice suddenly going thick and bitter. She busied herself closing up her case, within which Ahsoka had glimpsed the various accoutrements expensive courtesans sometimes carried with them. “The Empire saw to that.”

“What clan?” Ahsoka asked again.

Siren lowered her gaze, hesitating. After a long moment, she said, “Syndulla.”

Ahsoka straightened up, catching her wrist in one hand. Siren pulled back, her eyes huge; Ahsoka said, “It’s all right,” and drew her to her feet. She led Siren out of the garden and into the street, where Alecto Syndulla was waiting with her back against the wall, her hand resting on her blaster.

She looked up as they came out. “Who’s this?”

Ahsoka felt Siren go stiff beneath her hand. “Auntie?”

She released the woman as Alecto came towards them, her eyes huge. Siren stood still, trembling like a frightened tandreed, and said, “Auntie?” again, her voice gone high and soft, a child’s.

“Ojeda,” Alecto breathed. She cupped the girl’s face between her palms, delicately, as if she was something fragile and breakable. “You’re alive.”

“Auntie,” Siren said a third time, then flung her arms around Alecto’s neck.

Alecto wrapped her arms around her, whispering something against her ear-cone – Ahsoka couldn’t make it out, just that it was in Twi’leki. She stood back and watched the two women, thinking, _even if we can’t make it into the Imperial Complex, this trip was worth it for this._

There were so few happy endings these days.

At last Alecto raised her head from her niece’s and looked at Ahsoka. “Thank you,” she said, dropping back into Basic. “Thank you –”

“I didn’t do anything,” Ahsoka said. “Not really.”

Alecto cupped Siren’s – Ojeda’s – face again. “We’re going to go now,” she said. “All right? We’re going to go now. Your uncle and your cousins are waiting for us.”

Ojeda’s huge, doe-like eyes went even wider. “Cousins –”

“Doriah and Xiaan.”

Ojeda clutched at Alecto’s arms. “My brothers – Koyi and Ilar –”

Alecto shook her head.

Ojeda’s beautiful face crumpled in grief, but after a moment she set her jaw and nodded.

Her aunt took her hand, her gloved fingers laced with Ojeda’s blue ones. Ojeda followed her as Alecto drew her down the street, Ahsoka pausing behind them to close the garden door.

Cham, Doriah and Xiaan, and QT-KT were still waiting beneath the decorative overhang, Xiaan and QT-KT apparently involved in an intense whispered (on Xiaan’s part) conversation. At the sound of their footsteps on the pavement, Doriah thrust Xiaan behind him, his hand falling to his blaster before he recognized Alecto and Ahsoka. Cham had already had his blaster out.

“Fulcrum?” he said sharply, his gaze fixed on Alecto and Ojeda. “Alecto?”

“Oh my gods,” Doriah breathed, reaching out to shove Cham’s blaster down. “Ojeda?”

Ojeda’s gaze flicked to Alecto, then Alecto let go of her hand and she stumbled forward, ungraceful for the first time since Ahsoka had seen her. Doriah ran to her, catching her in his arms, and she let out a sound that was nearly a sob, her hands coming up to touch his face, his lekku, his shoulders.

“Doriah,” she said. “ _Doriah_ –”

Xiaan had followed her cousin, and the two enfolded her in their embrace. Ahsoka could see that Ojeda and Xiaan were both crying, Doriah apparently near to it.

Cham holstered his blaster and took a step towards them, then paused, apparently unwilling to interrupt the trio. He looked at Alecto and Ahsoka instead. “How – did you know? Did you know my sister’s daughter was here?”

Ahsoka shook her head. “I never knew my contact’s identity. I swear, Cham, I had no idea.”

Cham looked at her for a long moment, then nodded. He stepped away, laying a hand on Ojeda’s shoulder. She pulled back from Doriah and Xiaan to look at him, her eyes wide. They stood watching each other for a moment in silence, then Cham pulled her into a hug.

“Ojeda,” he said softly. “Oh, my brave girl.”

*

Hera was fast asleep with her head on Kanan’s chest when her comlink sounded, startling her into wakefulness.

“Tell them we’re dead,” Kanan mumbled, his arm around her waist. “Or they’ll be.”

Hera let out a groan that might have been agreement if she had the energy to think about it, leaning off him to grope on the floor in the direction of her discarded clothes until she found her beeping comlink. “This is Agent Syndulla,” she said, her words slurring from exhaustion.

_“Hera? This is Agent Beneke.”_

Kanan put his arm over his face. Hera dug the heel of her free hand into her eyes, trying to wake herself up. “Can I call you back, Agent?”

_“This won’t take long, Hera.”_

“Yes, sir,” Hera made herself say. She clambered off of Kanan, half-falling off the bunk as she did so and catching herself on the cold deck. Kanan groaned again, dragging the blankets back over himself as Hera groped for the robe she had brought into his cabin. She found it eventually and shrugged one-armed into it, switching her comlink from one hand to the other as she did so, then leaned back against the base of the bunk, pulling the hem of her robe down over her bare knees. Almost immediately she wished that she had just stayed under the blankets and had this conversation from Kanan’s bed, since it wasn’t as though it was going to be particularly private anyway. Hera _hated_ being cold.

She tugged at the corner of the blanket hanging down over her shoulder. Kanan relinquished it without having to be asked, and Hera pulled it off the bunk to wrap around her, leaving Kanan covered by just the sheets. He seldom, as far as she had ever notice in the six years they had been together, actually felt the cold.

“Sir?” she said again, and felt the weight of the mattress she was leaning against shift as Kanan pushed himself up on one elbow to listen. Hopefully Beneke didn’t want privacy for this conversation, though considering that it was nearly midnight on Lothal and past that on Naboo it was fairly likely that he did. Hera was too tired to think about leaving the cabin. It was only Kanan, anyway.

_“Did you follow up on that errand I asked about?”_

“Yes, sir,” Hera said, aware of Kanan’s sudden attention. “There was nothing there, just some strange readings on the _Ghost_ ’s sensors. There was nothing that matched them in the files I have access to.”

_“Interesting,”_ Beneke said slowly. _“Did Agent Kallus happen to ask about it?”_

Hera dug the heel of her free hand into her forehead, thinking, _oh stars, don’t let this be part of his blasted feud with Kallus_. “No, sir. He brought up the convoy’s destruction as evidence of rebel activity in the sector, but that was it. And you were there for that, sir.”

_“Hmm.”_ He paused, then added slowly, _“Has your Inquisitor mentioned the reason for his assignment on Lothal at all?”_

Behind Hera, Kanan sat up, and she looked over her shoulder to see him frowning , all his attention on the comlink now. He shook his head slightly in response to her unasked question, and she said, “I was under the impression that it was routine Crucible business; another Inquisitor was killed recently and Ka – and he was the nearest available to take his place.”

_“Any idea what that routine business was?”_

Hera shut her eyes, letting her breath out, and said, “No, sir. I’m sorry, I don’t see what this has to do with the convoy or with Agent Kallus.”

_“Perhaps nothing,”_ Beneke said slowly. _“But I have discovered that the convoy’s origin point was Lothal, and it’s highly unusual for Agent Kallus to follow up on something like this himself; he wasn’t in the sector already.”_

Hera rubbed at her face again, trying to force herself to concentrate on the conversation despite her exhaustion. “I’m not privy to that information, sir.”

_“I wouldn’t expect so, Hera,”_ Beneke said, his voice kind. _“It’s all right. Just keep an eye on Agent Kallus, won’t you? I’m concerned that he may be running an operation behind the Bureau’s back, and it will do no one any good if he goes off on his own private vendetta. I’ve been concerned about this for quite some time now; you know how he gets.”_

Yes, Hera knew how Agent Kallus got, only too well. She covered her eyes with one hand; she wanted to pay close attention to Agent Kallus only slightly more than she wanted to jump into a volcano. But all she said was, “Yes, sir. I’ll do what I can.”

_“Good girl.”_

She didn’t answer, waiting for him to go on until he finally said, _“That’s all. Good night, Hera.”_

“Good night, Agent Beneke.”

Hera shut the comlink off and leaned back against the bunk, breathing out slowly. “Kanan,” she said.

“Yeah?”

“What in blazes was in that convoy?”

She tipped her head back in time to see Kanan run a hand over his face, his expression exhausted. “A kyber crystal,” he said.

“I don’t know what that is.”

“A lightsaber crystal. Except this one wasn’t going to be used for any lightsaber.”

“What do you mean?” Hera asked.

Kanan glanced aside. “The thing was bigger than I am. They’re not using that for a lightsaber, and they’re not using it for the kind of guns that can fit on a star destroyer.”

“They?” Hera said softly.

“We.”

“How did the rebels find out about it? Fulcrum was responsible for destroying the convoy, wasn’t she?” That was what Agent Kallus had thought, anyway.

Kanan didn’t answer for a long time, and finally Hera twisted around so that she could climb back onto the bunk with him, dragging the blankets with her. He moved automatically to make space for her, but his gaze was fixed elsewhere, his lower lip caught between his teeth. Finally he said, “I don’t think they did.”

“What do you mean?”

“I think I might have done it,” Kanan said.

*

“Only two bucketheads on the gate,” Doriah said, lowering the macrobinoculars he had been holding to his eyes.

“But more on patrol, plus there’s that gun,” Ahsoka added. She turned a dial on the side of her macrobinoculars, her frown deepening as Cham glanced at her. “Getting past the patrol is just timing; if we can get past the guards on the gate right after they pass, we’ll have another hour before they circle around again. I think.”

“I can take that shot from here,” Alecto said, starting to unsling the blaster rifle she was carrying over her back.

“They’ll hear it,” Cham pointed out, waving her back, and Alecto settled down with a scowl. “It will bring the patrol running before we can reach the gate.”

There weren’t many buildings near the Naboo Imperial Complex; the ones that had been there before the Empire had taken it over had all been torn to minimize the risk of approach by outsiders. They were all perched on the roof of the closest one Ahsoka had been able to find, trying not to shiver in the early autumn chill and waiting for their best opportunity to get inside.

There was a light step from behind them, and Cham looked up to see Ojeda approaching. Doriah had given up his coat to her; unlike the rest of them she wasn’t dressed for the weather, since her light cloak had been meant more for decoration than warmth. But she was here. She was _here_ , Cham thought, with the same disbelieving joy that he hadn’t been able to shake since Ahsoka had brought her to them barely an hour ago. He hadn’t thought that he would ever see any of his youngest sister’s children again, and here was Ojeda, practically waiting for them –

Sometimes, the gods did give.

“I think,” Ojeda said hesitantly, “I might be able to get in. Or to distract them, at least, and you can –” She made a vague gesture with one hand, looking uncertainly at Cham. “I’ve done outcalls to the Imperial Complex before, the night guards know me. They won’t be looking for anyone else.”

“I don’t want you in danger,” Doriah said before Cham could say anything.

Ojeda glanced at him, then aside. “I won’t be,” she said. “Like I said, I’ve done outcalls here before. None of them will expect anyone else. I’ve never even come with any of the other girls from the House.”

“Uncle!” Doriah protested.

Cham clenched his jaw so hard it hurt in order to keep from saying something that he knew he would regret. He looked at Alecto instead, seeing the torn expression in her eyes before she said, “Are you sure, Ojeda?”

She nodded, plucking at the hem of Doriah’s coat with long blue fingers. “Yes. Just – don’t hurt them too badly?”

Doriah’s mouth twisted. “I can’t make any promises.”

Ojeda looked as though she wanted to protest, but didn’t say anything in response to that. Xiaan crept forward across the rooftop – she had been sitting with Ojeda and QT-KT – and took her hand. “You don’t have to if you don’t want to.”

“I can do it,” Ojeda said, looking down at her; Xiaan was almost a head shorter than she was. “It’s all right.”

Xiaan bit her lip, looking at Doriah; he set his jaw and shrugged.

“If we’re going to do this, we need to do it now,” Ahsoka said. “The patrol’s about to come around again.”

“All right,” Cham said, trying to hide the unhappiness in his voice. He didn’t like the idea of putting Ojeda out there alone, not after they had just gotten her back – he knew her mother Aleema could have handled it, but he didn’t know how Ojeda would react to the stress of suddenly being in the field, especially considering where she had been only a few hours earlier, where she had been for the past ten years. The last time he had seen Ojeda, she had been a shy, nervous twelve-year-old, unhappy about being sent away from Ryloth and her friends, the comforts of the Syndulla properties. Hera had been a fighter, even then; she had wanted to stay with Free Ryloth and give the Imperials what for. Ojeda had been appalled at the suggestion.

But that had been eleven years ago, and he didn’t know his niece anymore.

They left the rooftop and Ojeda took Doriah’s coat off, handing it back to him. Beneath it she was wearing a short gown that seemed to consist mostly of pearls and strategically placed silk; Cham glanced at it and then away, clenching a fist at his side where she couldn’t see it as she retrieved her cloak from Xiaan, who had been leaning against QT-KT and holding the soft fabric against herself. Ojeda slung it around her shoulders with a swirl of shimmering fabric, settling it with quick, experienced gestures.

“Ojeda,” Doriah said; when she didn’t look up he caught at her elbow, and she turned towards him. “You don’t have to do this. A good stun bolt – or Fulcrum can do some kind of Jedi hoodoo –”

“Hoodoo?” Ahsoka said, raising a brow.

Ojeda patted Doriah’s cheek. “It’s all right. Just don’t hurt them too badly.”

Doriah bit his lip, scowling, but Ojeda had already turned away. Cham said softly, “Fulcrum, you and Doriah handle the troopers.”

They both nodded, moving off after Ojeda at an angle where they wouldn’t be visible to the troopers.

Cham drew his blaster as Alecto did the same. Xiaan came up behind them, followed by QT-KT. She was wearing a blaster, but she didn’t reach for it, shoving her hands into the pockets of her jacket instead.

As she emerged into the courtyard in front of the gates to the Imperial Complex, Ojeda’s gait altered, her hips and lekku swaying, the hem of the cloak fluttering around her ankles. Something about it reminded Cham of Isval, of the one time he had followed her into the Octagon to see what she was getting up to during her jaunts into Lessu, when she went…hunting. It wasn’t something that he had ever expected to see on his shy, quiet niece.

Ojeda went straight up to the guards without hesitation, both of them relaxing and leaning in as she stopped in front of them, saying something that made one of them laugh. She laid a hand along the side of his helmet, her body curving invitingly towards him, and Cham felt every muscle in his body go tight with outrage. That was his niece, all he had left of his youngest sister; how dare any Imperial so much as look at her –

Both men were so fixated on her that they didn’t see Doriah and Ahsoka coming up behind them.

Ojeda stepped quickly backwards as Ahsoka threw one arm around a trooper’s throat, holding him until he went limp. Doriah, less subtle, merely slammed his stormtrooper’s head into the side of the wall.

Cham and Alecto went running across the courtyard towards them, Xiaan and QT-KT following. Ahsoka was doing something to the control panel to open the gates as Doriah leaned in towards Ojeda; she was looking up at him, her mouth set, as Cham arrived.

“You’re all right?” he asked her, laying a hand on her shoulder.

“Nothing happened,” she said. “I’m fine.”

By the time the gates slid open, Doriah had gotten both stormtroopers upright, propping them against the walls so that any casual passersby would think that they were still conscious and on guard. They slipped quickly in past the walls, Cham trying to push down his feeling that this could go very wrong – he didn’t exactly make a habit of walking into Imperial buildings. Cham had always figured that if he ever did, it would be because something had gone very wrong.

They all stood still for a moment, taking in the size and grandeur of the Amidala Memorial Courtyard, which was unlike any other Imperial complex Cham had ever seen. It was massive; perfectly circular, with a miniature canal circling a central island, and a colonnade running along the buildings to the side, fountains at regular intervals in the open space of the central courtyard. The buildings were all some kind of sand-colored stone, roofed with green tile; the domed bulk of the palace rose in the distance.

“Where are we supposed to start?” Doriah asked, staring around.

“The only plans I could get were outdated, from before the Empire took it over,” Ahsoka admitted. “I was here during the Clone Wars, but that was years ago; I don’t know where anything is now. It shouldn’t be too hard to find –” she added doubtfully.

“What are you looking for?” Ojeda asked. “Sabé said – she asked me to get Agent Kantha’s handprint, are you looking for the ISB headquarters?”

“Do you know where it is?” Alecto asked.

She nodded. “I told you, I’ve done outcalls here before. The boys aren’t supposed to have us in there, but they do anyway, and they pay the House a lot for the privilege. It’s this way.”

She led them across the courtyard with quick, certain steps. Cham felt uncomfortably exposed, walking with his blaster out and his gaze constantly moving around, but there seemed to be no one else here. The palace was lit up despite the late hour, whatever party was going on evidently still in full swing. Hopefully that meant that there was no one here to notice a half-dozen rebels breaking into the ISB.

Getting inside the ISB headquarters required the handprint that Ahsoka had gotten from Ojeda – Cham didn’t like to think about how Ojeda had gotten it in the first place – but no alarms went off as they stepped inside. Xiaan went immediately to the computer console by the door, tapping a quick command in and frowning at it.

“The server room is this way,” she said after a moment. “Come on, Qutee.”

She trotted off down the hallway before Cham could stop her, QT-KT rolling along behind her. Doriah swore softly under his breath and went after them without looking back.

“I guess we go that way,” Ahsoka said.

The four of them followed Xiaan and Doriah, Ojeda in the middle and Alecto bringing up the rear. Cham was uncomfortably aware of the size of the building around them, the lack of prior intel they had had – for all he knew there could have been a hundred ISB agents behind the closed doors they were passing, all waiting for them to get far enough away from the entrance to make escape impossible.

“Ojeda,” he said, dropping back to her side. “You said that you had been here before at this time of night. How many –”

Up ahead, there was a single blaster shot.

Cham broke into a run, his blaster raised as he came skidding around the corner. Doriah had one of his blasters out and his other arm around Xiaan, pressing her behind himself, while QT-KT had rolled out in front of them, her electrical prod extended towards the limp figure on the floor. One of the office doors was open, light spilling out into the hallway and a broken caf mug on the tile.

Doriah glanced up as Cham came to a stop beside him. “I just stunned him,” he said. “He came out –”

Xiaan had one hand folded into the back of Doriah’s coat, breathing hard. “I ran into him,” she contributed, her voice small.

“You’re all right?” Cham checked, as Alecto went over to the man and toed him over onto his front.

“Cham,” she said.

“What?”

She pointed her blaster at the man’s face. “This is the man who was with Hera in those holos from the Spire,” she said. “This is Agent Beneke.”

*

Agent Beneke woke up when Cham slapped him across the face.

It took him a moment to come to full consciousness, and Cham was more than ready to hit him again whether or not it would actually help, but he saw the flicker of realization in the human’s eyes as he recognized Cham, his wrists tightening as he pulled at the bonds.

“Do you know who I am?” Cham asked.

“Syndulla.” His voice was a light tenor, with a Naboo accent; his gaze flickered from Cham to Alecto and Ahsoka, taking them in. “This is unusually bold for you, isn’t it? I thought you were too busy with your little fleet.”

“Let’s forget about my fleet for the moment,” Cham said. He put his hands on the arms of the chair to which Beneke was bound and leaned forward, his lips skinning back to show sharpened teeth. “Let’s talk about my daughter.”

“I’d heard you misplaced her,” Beneke said. “Very careless of you, Syndulla.”

Alecto snarled, low in the back of her throat, and surged forward; Ahsoka caught her by the arm and said, “Wait.”

Beneke’s gaze went to her. “Alecto Syndulla,” he said. “It’s been a few years since the last time we spoke.”

Cham didn’t take his eyes off Beneke, but he heard Alecto say, “We’ve never met.”

“I was in a few of your interrogations ten years ago.” Beneke’s voice was calm. “Your daughter doesn’t look much like you, you know, except for the skin.” His gaze flicked to Cham. “She does look like you.”

“You son of a –” Alecto jerked forward again, Ahsoka’s grip tightening as she pulled her back.

“You I don’t know,” Beneke said to her. Then he narrowed his gaze, apparently putting two and two together, and he said slowly, “You must be the mysterious Fulcrum. You’ve given the Bureau quite the runaround over the years; none of us had any idea you were just one being.”

Ahsoka smiled, thin and dangerous.

“Agent Beneke,” Cham said. “You’re getting off the subject.”

Beneke looked back at him, tilting his head slightly to one side. “And what subject is that, Syndulla?”

“My daughter Hera,” Cham said. “I’ve seen the vids from the Spire on Stygeon Prime. I know what you did to her there.”

Beneke raised one eyebrow. “And what was that?”

“You brainwashed my baby,” Alecto spat, pulling at Ahsoka’s restraining hand. “You turned her against her family!”

He didn’t look at her, though his brow furrowed a little. “Hera wants to serve her Emperor,” he said. “She’s a good girl, questionable parentage – and questionable choices – aside. She’s done great service to her Empire, all in an attempt to make up for your crimes, Syndulla. Someday she may even succeed.”

It took everything Cham had not to hit Beneke again. He heard Alecto hiss through her teeth, a vicious, ugly sound like a trapped animal.

Forcing himself to keep his voice calm, he said, “Tell me about Project Nemesis.”

“Why would I do that?” Beneke said.

“Because you’re going to die,” Cham said. “How long that takes is up to you, Agent.”

“What a compelling argument you offer, Syndulla,” Beneke said. “I believe I’ll pass.”

“One of your people picked Hera out of the crowd on Zardossa Stix and put her in the Spire,” Cham said. “And that’s where you came in. You spent weeks convincing my child to turn against her family, her world, her species, against everything she believed in – why? What do you – what does the Empire – have to gain from that? From one Twi’lek girl who had no way to defend herself from your evil?”

“It wasn’t just one.”

Cham looked over his shoulder to see Xiaan standing in the entrance to the officer, a datapad clutched to her chest. She gave Beneke a nervous glance, then said, “I found it in the files. There were seven hundred and fifty-three children, all – all nonhumans, that the ISB screened for Project Nemesis over the past twelve years. Two hundred and six passed the initial screening, three were remanded to the Imperial Inquisition, one hundred and one graduated from the academies, and seventy-four are active right now. Hera is NMS-007.”

“Xiaan Syndulla, I presume,” Agent Beneke said.

“Don’t look at her,” Cham said. “Look at me. Tell me about Project Nemesis. Why take all those children? Why put them through this?”

Beneke looked at him for a long moment, his brows drawing together. “You’ve seen her,” he said suddenly.

Cham blinked despite himself, glancing over his shoulder at Alecto, who looked equally baffled. Xiaan hugged her datapad to herself, her shoulders drawn in.

“On Thyferra?” Beneke said slowly. “When Jarrus was injured – I thought she was hiding something when we spoke about it. You were there. She lied to me.”

_Gods_ , Cham thought; it was clear from Beneke’s expression that that was an uncommon occurrence. “Good,” he said. “Maybe she does still value her family over the Empire.”

Beneke’s lip curled. “Then why isn’t she with you, Syndulla?”

Cham’s hands clenched on the arms of the chair. “Xiaan,” he said without looking at her. “Go back to Doriah.”

He heard her step on the tiled floor as she backed away, then the sound of the door sliding shut behind her.

“I want,” Cham said, “to know about my daughter.”

Beneke looked at him for a long moment, calculation behind his mild eyes, and then he smiled. He said, “Hera Syndulla is the reason that the Nemesis Program exists. She’s the most successful candidate it ever turned out, and if it wasn’t for her, the program would have been shut down years ago.”

His gaze flickered from Cham to Alecto. “She used to cry for you back at the Spire, you know. She used to swear up and down that her parents would come for her, that Cham Syndulla loved his child more than his mission. That stopped weeks before she passed the screenings to enter the Imperial Academy. After that she didn’t cry for you anymore.”

Alecto hissed again; Cham didn’t look at her, his gaze fixed on Beneke.

“The majority of candidates who pass the initial screening wash out in the Academy,” Beneke said. “Most cadets aren’t kind to aliens, and the training is hard even for those who have been preparing for it. There are always casualties. And those who don’t have the…temperament…for the academies are removed. Hera was never like that.”

For a moment his smile went proud, nearly paternal, and Cham felt his skin crawl. 

“Hera never wanted anything other than to serve her Empire,” he said. “You know, Syndulla, she wanted so badly to do good, to be needed, to have a _mission_. She wanted to impress you, but you were too busy for her. She saw how your world, your precious people, had suffered as a result of your so-called resistance. It didn’t take much convincing to make her understand that the best way to help the galaxy was to join the Empire.”

Cham opened his mouth to respond, realized that there was nothing he could say, and shut it again.

“She was top of her class at the Academy,” Beneke said. “She set Empire-wide records her year, you know? Well, I suppose you don’t. You had other things on your mind. She applied for both the Navy and the Starfighter Corps, but both of those would have been a grievous misuse of her talents. The Bureau tapped her as a candidate even before she had finished her first year on Serenno. And she was top of her class here, too. We never hesitated at putting her into the field on her own. Her loyalty was absolute.”

“But something happened then,” Ahsoka said.

Cham blinked and looked at her; he had nearly forgotten that she was there.

Ahsoka let go of Alecto and folded her arms across her chest. “The Inquisitor,” she said. “Kanan Jarrus, Caleb Dume – whatever he was calling himself then. She met him.”

Beneke scowled. “I don’t see how Jarrus is relevant.”

Ahsoka smiled. “His control slipped,” she said to Cham, her voice casual. “Dume showed up and Agent Beneke here went from being the most important thing in Hera’s world to playing second fiddle to a pretty face and a nice body.”

Cham looked back to see the man’s lip curl. “Hardly a surprise that a girl like Hera would jump into bed with the first scoundrel she met,” he said.

“‘A girl like Hera’?” Alecto echoed. “What do you mean by that?”

“Oh, you know,” Beneke said, a smirk lingering around his lips. “Twi’lek females have certain physical needs.”

Alecto threw herself at him before Ahsoka could grab her, but Cham was closer. His punch snapped Beneke’s head sideways; Cham pulled his fist back to hit him again, but all Beneke did was spit blood to the side, his tongue prodding gingerly at a loosened tooth.

Alecto came up beside Cham, her hands clenched so tightly that her knuckles were nearly yellow. “Why?” she demanded. “Why would you do that to my child? All the Empire does is use people, why do _this_? Why make _my_ daughter one of your own? Any Twi’lek, any nonhuman? Most of you don’t even think we’re people.”

The place where Cham had struck him was already starting to redden. One of Beneke’s hands jerked as though he had tried to rub at it before remembering that he was bound. He looked up at Alecto, studying her distraught face in silence for a moment.

“This Empire,” he said at last, “is not made up solely of humans. Most of my colleagues would prefer to forget that. Instead they choose to believe that humans are superior to aliens because the Emperor is human and because they are human; they believe that the Emperor fills the ranks of the Imperial service with humans because humans are superior to every other species in the galaxy. Many of them believe that the Republic and the Confederacy both fell because a multitude makes discord, because both allowed nonhumans to serve in the government, in the military, in other positions. They forget that the Republic stood for a thousand years before it fell. It would not have stood for so long if it had not been willing to embrace both its strengths and its weaknesses, opening itself to worlds beyond the Core, to species other than humans. It faltered in the end, but it stood first.”

“You almost sound as though you admire it,” Ahsoka observed.

Beneke’s gaze flickered to her and he shrugged. “The Republic was weak and it fell. But there are reasons that it lasted long enough to fall in the first place.” He looked back at Cham and Alecto. “The Empire rose from the ashes of the old Republic. It inherited some of its strengths and some of its weaknesses, but it has a few of its own as well. Aliens pay taxes, they vote – on some worlds – they are citizens of the Empire. In most cases they are forbidden from serving it in any official capacity. Hatred against the Empire festers on worlds like yours – Ryloth and Mon Cala, Shili and Dorin – alien worlds – because the Imperial governors in such places refuse to admit that it is citizens they govern, not merely subjects. The populaces of such worlds are not nerfs to be herded blindly; they will rise up given time and opportunity. A sentiment I believe you are somewhat familiar with, Syndulla.”

“What does this have to do with my daughter?” Alecto demanded. “Hera was _fourteen_ when you took her. She was a child! She was no threat to you. None of our children were.”

“They would have grown up to be,” Beneke said matter-of-factly. “The Empire doesn’t believe in mass reeducation programs yet, but a few promising candidates – children who will grow up to serve the Empire like any other cadet – will change that. No human can walk into a Twi’lek colony or a Mon Cala neighborhood without being suspected, but someone like Hera or our other agents…they can. Even those who didn’t pass the ISB screenings and went into other branches of the service have their own purpose. Change starts within our own ranks. If those who serve the Empire continually underestimate and dismiss aliens, this Empire will suffer for it. It already has. Nemesis will change that in time.”

“You son of a –” Alecto said.

“Why Hera?”

Ojeda’s voice was small, and when Cham turned to look at her he saw that her eyes were huge, her arms tucked close to her sides. Doriah and Xiaan were behind her, the three of them crowded into the doorway.

“Why Hera?” she said again. “Why not me or Doriah or any of the other children from the colony? Why just Hera? Why were the rest of us –” She swallowed.

Beneke’s gaze flickered to Cham. “I see you found the Flower of Ryloth,” he said.

Ojeda turned her face aside, biting her lip between her teeth. Alecto glared at Beneke and went to her, wrapping an arm around the younger woman’s shoulders.

Beneke blinked once, slow, like a tired old predator. “None of the others passed the initial screening,” he allowed. “The Flower of Ryloth’s presence on Naboo was a test for Hera, one she passed by never taking it. Hera was invited to visit the Lake House when she was a probationary agent here, more than once. She never went. We never found out what she would do when confronted with her cousin.”

Ojeda’s mouth dropped open, staring at him.

“You _bastard_ ,” Doriah spat, drawing his blaster and taking a step forward before Xiaan caught his arm. “You sick, twisted –”

“Such a good girl,” Beneke said, smiling. “You ought to be proud, Syndulla. Such a good girl, a good agent – one of the best in the Bureau. She was so eager to prove that she was the equal, even the better, of anyone else here that she was ready to do anything it took to serve her Empire. Anything –”

Cham wasn’t even aware that he had drawn his blaster until he heard the shot ringing through the small room. Beneke jerked and went limp, a small hole between his eyes and the back of his skull completely blown out.

Ojeda screamed, the sound abruptly cut off as Alecto slapped a hand over her mouth.

Cham stared down at his extended arm, then slowly lowered his blaster. He looked back at his family; Xiaan was staring with wide eyes, still hanging onto Doriah with one hand, while Ojeda was trembling in Alecto’s arms. Alecto met his gaze and nodded once, her jaw set.

“Did you get the files?” Cham asked Xiaan.

She nodded, still staring at Beneke’s body.

“Then we’re leaving,” Cham said. “There’s nothing else we want here.”


	14. Stray

Ezra woke up completely confused, not certain where he was or how he had got there. The bed was too soft, the sheets smelled wrong – the fact that there _were_ sheets in the first place was wrong, since he didn’t exactly bother with them in the tower – and there was a weird bass hum that he felt more than heard.

Usually waking up somewhere new wasn’t a good thing, Ezra thought, and felt blindly around for his energy slingshot and the small knife he usually kept at the small of his back. He found both easily, slipping the slingshot onto his wrist and grasping the knife before he finally opened his eyes.

That didn’t help his confusion.

He was staring up at a sunset, blood-colored and with four moons of differing sizes rising around it. Beneath it was what looked like a desert, with rocky crags rising against the setting sun and half a dozen small figures on it. Ezra squinted at them and realized that they were racing pods. Wondering, he reached up with one hand to touch them, feeling the brush strokes beneath his fingers. Whoever had painted them would have had to have lain on their back to do so; it must have taken hours.

“Wow,” he said out loud. He had screwed around with paint a couple of times, trying to do something interesting with his collection of stormtrooper helmets, and he was all right with a pencil, but he knew he didn’t have the patience to do something like this. He couldn’t make something look like a scene you could walk into.

Ezra let his hand drop from the painting and sat up gingerly, releasing his grip on his knife. He swung his legs over the side of the bunk, not used to his feet not touching the floor and not paying attention until he tried to get up and fell out of the bunk.

He hit the floor with a thump that rattled his bones and knocked the breath out of him. For a few minutes he just lay on his back, staring up at the ceiling; he had forgotten that the bunk was an upper one, since the lower one had been pulled out and replaced with a table and built in benches.

There was more paint on the ceiling, though this time Ezra had no idea how it had gotten there. He traced the pattern with his eyes for a few moments before realizing that it was a highly stylized star map, tracing a meandering route through the galaxy. The marked path started at Mandalore, tracked back and forth from unfamiliar world to unfamiliar world, and finally terminated at what he thought was Lothal.

Ezra turned his head sideways to look at the walls, which were decorated with more painted pictures, some spray-painted and others with finer brushstrokes. The table against the wall was crammed full of paint tins, jars, and boxes full of things whose purpose Ezra could only guess at.

Groaning, he pushed himself upright, retrieving his fallen knife. Sabine’s room, that was where he was. Sabine’s room on the _Ghost_ , which meant that he was on a starship for the first time in his life. It wasn’t actually a position he had ever expected to be in, though he had certainly played with the idea of leaving Lothal as soon as he was old enough to get a berth on one of the trading vessels that occasionally passed through Capital City. Played with. Not ever really planned to carry through, because that sort of thing didn’t happen to kids like him, and Ezra was comfortable on Lothal. It was his home. He knew who everyone was and how everything worked; there was no point in leaving and having to learn all that over again somewhere new.

None of which really explained what he was doing here on the _Ghost_ , which wasn’t just a starship, it was an _Imperial_ starship, crewed by some of the weirdest Imps he had ever met. Ezra knew that it had been the ISB who had arrested his parents, which meant that the fact he was here was pretty inexplicable. And yet Kanan – the Inquisitor – there had been something there. Ezra had _felt_ it. And it was crazy, it was the dumbest thing that he had ever done, but it had felt…right.

_If it was the ISB who took my parents, and this is an ISB ship, then maybe I can find out what happened to them._

The thought was quick and fleeting, and Ezra shoved it aside almost as soon as it crossed his mind. His parents were gone. It had been eight years. They were gone, and they weren’t coming back, and he had to get them out of his head. He’d barely thought about them in years, anyway, it shouldn’t be that difficult.

Even if they would be incredibly disappointed in him for being here. But it wasn’t as though Ezra was _working_ for the Empire. He wasn’t the one who was an ISB agent or an Inquisitor. He was just…here. Whatever that meant for him.

 _Why_ are _you here, Ezra?_ he thought, and then realized that he didn’t have a good answer. “It felt right” wasn’t an answer – especially not one that he was interested in having.

“Ugh,” he said out loud, the sound of his voice breaking into the faint hum he had been aware of earlier. That had to be the ship. Or – something to do with the ship, anyway. He really hoped that it wasn’t the engines and they weren’t in flight; he wasn’t sure that he was ready to deal with that yet.

Sighing, Ezra pushed his fingers through his hair and went to go find the refresher, which Sabine had showed him yesterday. He tried to clean up as best he could, knowing that it wouldn’t even look like he had put in an effort next to the razor-crisp lines on Agent Syndulla’s uniform or Kanan’s imposing black leathers. Sabine at least looked like she did everything on purpose; Ezra just looked like a mess.

He sighed and gave up, wandering back out into the corridor. The ship itself felt quiet around him; Ezra didn’t know what time of the day or night it was, the way he would have if he had been in the tower. Even though they were still on Lothal – he _hoped_ they were still on Lothal – everything seemed muted, far-off. Ezra didn’t feel certain about anything right now.

He made his way back to the galley, the doors sliding open near-silently without his having to reach for the controls. Somewhere in the distance, he realized, he could hear the grumpy astromech droid rattling around – or at least Ezra thought that was the droid. Maybe ships like this just made weird noises sometimes. He wouldn’t know.

He was still looking around as he went into the galley, and only had a few seconds to observe that there were plates on the table before a giant purple hand grabbed him by the neck. Ezra shouted, horrified, and tried to twist around in midair. There was a crash from the direction of the living quarters.

“Who in blazes are you?” an unfamiliar voice bellowed near enough to his ears to deafen him.

The door slammed open; Ezra saw Kanan push through, his lightsaber hilt in his hand but the blade not yet lit. “Zeb, put him down!”

Whatever was hanging onto Ezra dropped him. Ezra hit the floor with a heavy thump that rattled his bones – wow, the second time this morning – and scrambled quickly away, waiting until he was pretty sure he was out of grabbing range before he twisted around to see who, or _what_ , it was.

It was the giant purple alien he had seen with Sabine before, even bigger and meaner-looking in person. Ezra felt his eyes widen as Agent Syndulla pushed her way into the room from under Kanan’s arm, a small orange-painted holdout blaster held in one hand. Sabine appeared a moment later, also holding her blasters.

“Is there anyone here _not_ carrying a weapon?” Ezra demanded.

“I heard yelling,” Sabine said, scrubbing the back of one hand over her eyes and yawning.

“What happened?” Agent Syndulla said, looking from the alien to Ezra.

“What’s this Loth-rat doing here?” growled the alien.

Kanan put his free hand over his face, rubbing at his eyes. “Ezra Bridger, Garazeb Orrelios. Zeb, Ezra. He’s going to be joining us on the _Ghost_.”

“Can I rethink that decision?” Ezra said, groping behind himself until he caught the edge of a bench and pulled himself upright, putting his back against the table. “Because I’m not really feeling the love here.”

“You recruited _him_?” Zeb demanded, jabbing one massive finger at Ezra. “ _Why_?”

“Why did they recruit _you_?” Ezra said. “I thought the Empire didn’t like aliens!”

“You –” Zeb took one step towards him before Agent Syndulla interposed herself between them, putting her free hand out in Zeb’s direction.

“I’m sure Kanan has a really good explanation for that,” she said, and shot a quick glance over her shoulder at Kanan, who ran a hand back through his loose hair.

“Oh, yeah, about that –”

“But if you’ll just calm down –”

“If no one’s going to kill each other, can I go back to bed?” Sabine asked, trying to cover a yawn with one hand. “Oh, by the way, Zeb, you better get used to the kid; I want my cabin back.”

“What?” Zeb said, as Ezra yelped, “I’m not sharing a room with that thing!”

“ _Thing_?”

“We’ll discuss this in the morning,” Kanan said, raising a hand. “Unless it is morning. Is it morning?”

Everyone shrugged as he looked around at them.

“I’ll take that as a no,” Agent Syndulla said. “Sabine, you can go back to bed. Zeb, go back to – whatever you were doing. Ezra – just don’t leave the ship or fire any of the guns, you don’t have a pass for the Imperial Complex yet.”

“I have to stay here with _him_?” Ezra and Zeb said in unison, then shot each other betrayed looks.

Kanan rubbed a hand over his face again. “Just don’t kill each other. We’re going back to bed.”

Sabine had already left. Kanan turned to go, yawning into his fist; Agent Syndulla paused to say, “He’s not that bad, really,” to Ezra. “Sorry about the welcome.”

A moment later she and Kanan were gone, the door sliding shut behind them.

Ezra and Zeb stared at each other as Ezra tried to choke down his nervous urge to run for his life. He probably wouldn’t get very far, but hey, he was sure there was a loose grate to a vent around here somewhere; Zeb, whatever he was, probably couldn’t fit into one of those. There were advantages to being small sometimes.

Zeb crossed muscular arms across his chest, peering doubtfully down at Ezra. “Where’d Kanan dig you out of?”

“None of your business,” Ezra said, mirroring his posture and trying to drop his shoulders. He didn’t know if the guy could read human body language, but since he hung out with Kanan and Sabine, he probably could. “Where’d he find _you_?”

“None of _your_ business.” The big alien scowled at him. “What Kanan thinks he can do with a runt like you –”

“Hey!” Ezra protested. “Sabine’s not that much older!”

“Sabine’s Academy-trained,” Zeb said. “One of the ones that’s halfway decent; she’s not like the cannon fodder they push out here. You –”

“I’ve got street smarts,” Ezra said with as much dignity as he could muster.

“Yeah, that oughta count for a lot when we’re six weeks into the forests on Kashyyyk, chasing Wookiee terrorists.” His ears flattened; something about his stance made Ezra think _challenge_ , though he wasn’t sure how he was supposed to respond to it. He’d know if this was in the alleys in Capital City, or even out in the plains, where you sometimes saw scavengers attacking Imperial shipments.

“Shouldn’t that be just like home for you?” Ezra said, hazarding his best guess at what Zeb was.

He knew he had guessed wrong as soon as Zeb’s ears tipped up. “I’m a Lasat, not a Wookiee,” he snapped.

“Sorry!” Ezra said hastily. “I’ve never seen either before.”

“Yeah, that’s obvious.” Zeb frowned at him. “You’ll know a Wookiee when you see one. They don’t look like me.”

As far as Ezra knew Wookiees didn’t get around much, so he thought the chances of seeing one were pretty slim. “Sure,” he said.

He and Zeb stared at each other in silence for another minute, long enough that Ezra began to fidget nervously, wondering if he could just walk away and explore the ship. Sabine had showed him some of it yesterday, but Ezra preferred to do his looking around on his own.

Abruptly, Zeb said, “You hungry?”

“What?”

He lifted one hand in the direction of the counter and stovetop, both of which showed the detritus of whatever Zeb had been doing before Ezra came in. “Well, the others went back to bed.”

“I –” As if reminded, Ezra’s stomach growled suddenly, and he flushed. “Yeah, okay.”

*

They were at the entrance to the spaceport by the time the reality of the situation actually penetrated. Flower froze, staring at the arch at the end of the street, and said, “Wait – I can’t –”

Doriah turned back to her immediately. “Ojeda, what is it?”

 _Not my name_ , she thought, but Flower knew that if she told him that he wouldn’t understand. “I can’t leave,” she said. “I can’t –”

She saw Cham and Alecto turn at this, but it was Xiaan who said, “What are you talking about? You can’t stay here!”

“My friends are here,” Flower tried to explain. “I can’t leave them. I can’t –” _I can’t be that little girl you expect me to be._ She didn’t know how to be Ojeda Syndulla anymore. Flower had let that little girl die on Zardossa Stix and buried her with the shards of her past, because she couldn’t be Ojeda Syndulla and survive the Houses. She didn’t think that Doriah or Cham or any of the others could understand that. They had lives. They were people; they weren’t merely the servants of the Empire.

She shook her head again, her lekku brushing against the backs of her shoulders. “I can’t. I – you need me,” she added quickly to Fulcrum, who had been scanning the deserted street, one hand concealed beneath the fold of her poncho – probably on a blaster or other weapon. “If I leave, then you won’t have anyone in the Lake House. The rainbow – Lady Sabé wouldn’t have anyone there. And they’ll punish the other girls and boys in the House if I just vanish –”

Cham came over and took her shoulders in his hands. “Ojeda,” he said as she raised her gaze to his. He switched from Basic to Twi’leki; it took all of Flower’s concentration to follow the language she hadn’t spoken since she had been thirteen. “You are blood of my blood, my sister’s child, a curiate Syndulla. I will not leave you to be a plaything of the Empire.”

Flower stared at him, then said in Basic, her voice small, “I promised Opal I’d come back.”

“And we will,” Cham said. “We’ll come back for your friends. But now is not the time, Ojeda. Nothing is worth leaving you in that place.”

Fulcrum added soberly, “We wiped the security footage, but when the ISB finds Agent Beneke dead they’ll start looking at all his active projects, especially once those troopers wake up and mention that you were at the Imperial Complex. At the very least the ISB will pull you in for questioning, and trust me, you don’t want that.”

Flower couldn’t help her flinch. One of her regulars was an ISB interrogator; he sometimes came in with awful stories, though he seldom thought of them as anything other than symbols of his success as an Imperial officer. He was one of the men who had complained about the Twi’lek agent’s refusal to sleep with him.

_Hera. That was Hera._

Hera, who had been right here on Naboo the entire time, or at least enough of it – _stars help us all, if only one of the boys had ever bothered to mention her name_. Then Flower could have – what? She hadn’t been permitted to leave the House for outcalls until a few years ago, and it wasn’t as though Hera had ever come to the House. Agent Beneke had been very clear about that.

But she had been here. Flower had spent so long thinking that her family was scattered to the corners of the galaxy that the revelation that her cousin had been _right here_ was more shocking to her than her uncle’s appearance now, because at least that made sense. Hera…didn’t.

“Ojeda,” Doriah said again, his voice gentle, and Flower thought out of nowhere, _he sounds like Aunt Clotho._

She hadn’t thought about Clotho Syndulla in years. Doriah’s mother wasn’t a blood relative, or at least not a close one – she was something like a third cousin to Ojeda’s mother – but she had been living on the estate with the family after the Separatist occupation. She hadn’t been at the colony; Flower could only remember her in flashes. Green skin, lekku wrapped in trips of brightly colored cloth, a curl of warm laughter; just details. She did remember liking her.

Clotho hadn’t been at the colony. She might still be alive. Doriah might still have his mother.

Flower made herself look at Doriah, at the concerned expression on his scarred face, and made herself nod. Cham carefully released his grip on her shoulders and Doriah immediately wrapped an arm around her waist; Flower turned her cheek against his shoulder, trying to stop her shivering.

She shouldn’t leave. She should go back to the Lake House, because she wasn’t going to do any good with Free Ryloth, wherever they were or whatever they were doing – whatever they consisted of these days. All Flower knew about it was the little she had picked up from her clients; since it had never been one of their raging successes, few of them had ever wanted to talk about it, and Flower knew better than to press a conversational topic that her clients weren’t interested in.

Star was probably waiting up for her. She always did whenever Flower had outcalls. _She’ll be so angry with me._

Doriah pressed a kiss to her forehead. “Come on,” he said quietly. “Come on, Ojeda. Let’s go home.”

*

For the third time that night, Hera was jarred out of a deep sleep. She raised her head from Kanan’s chest and said faintly, “No,” dropping her head back to his collarbone and wondering if it was possible to strangle herself with the sheets rather than answer her beeping comlink.

Kanan groaned. “Let’s go rogue,” he mumbled. “I’m pretty sure nobody comms you when you’re rogue.”

The proposition sounded more attractive now than it had in years. Hera leaned over, making him grunt as she felt around on the floor for her discarded comlink, which turned out to be by her blaster. “Syndulla.”

_“This is Agent Kallus.”_

Hera sat bolt upright, suddenly wide awake. “Sir.”

 _“Come and see me immediately.”_ He terminated the transmission before Hera could ask what the summons was about. Rubbing at her face, Hera swung her legs over the side of the bed, grabbing up the pieces of her uniform that she could see. Her heart was hammering in her chest, adrenaline making her hands shake; she was sixteen again, back in the Imperial Academy and being called into the office of one instructor or another for whatever made-up reason they and her classmates could think up. She had spent a lot of time there.

Not with Agent Kallus, though. He had never bothered with that the year he had been lecturing at the ISB Academy, the year that she had been there. He hadn’t wanted her in the Imperial service at all; he had preferred to humiliate her in front of her classmates. He wouldn’t give her the dignity of being called into his office to be berated in private.

She felt Kanan sit up behind her. “What is it?”

“I don’t know.” There was a quaver in her voice that made Hera scowl. She didn’t look back at Kanan as she dressed as quickly as she could, pulling her uniform straight and looking around for her cap before she realized that it wasn’t in Kanan’s room. “Blast!”

“Hera –”

She ignored him, hurrying across the room and hitting the control for the door. It slid open and she stepped out into the corridor, hearing the faint murmur of voices from the direction of the galley before she crossed to her room. Sabine had already vacated it; Hera found her cap on the table where she had tossed it and slid it up over her headtails, pulling the strap tight beneath her jaw. She left her goggles where they were; they weren’t regulation and it was best not to toe the line too far with Kallus, not when she didn’t know what she was being called in for.

Hera turned to go, then caught sight of her reflection in her mirror and hesitated, staring at the white markings on her headtails. Right now they felt like a glaring marker of her difference; all Hera could think of was how much she had hated them when she had been at the Academy. All those snide remarks she had gotten about primitive tribal markings, as if there weren’t cadets at the Academy who covered their own clan tattoos with makeup – of course, Hera’s skin and headtails had always made her stand out in a way that those humans never would.

“Blast,” she whispered again, then yanked open the drawer she kept her spare caps and headwraps in. She hadn’t wrapped her headtails for years and she had lost the hang of it, frowning at herself in the mirror as she pulled the gray leather straps around each headtail.

“Hey.”

Kanan’s voice made her jump, losing her hold on the leather straps. They unwound from around her headtail and Hera swore, almost in tears from frustration. Kanan curled a hand around hers, then took the straps from her fingers. “Let me,” he said.

Hera nodded, biting her lip because she didn’t trust herself to speak without crying. His touch on her headtails was light and familiar, wrapping the straps around her lekku in a crisscross pattern that obscured but couldn’t completely cover her markings. At another time it might have been erotic. As it was, all Hera could do was regulate her breathing and stare at her reflection in the mirror, trying to bring herself back to something resembling calm. She was a full agent now, in a completely different division than Agent Kallus. He couldn’t do anything to her, not without having to answer to Agent Beneke or Director Palak.

Kanan finished the wrapping on one of her headtails and moved onto the second one. “Do you want me to come?” he asked. “If it’s about the op, he might want both of us –”

“I was the one ordered in,” Hera said. She flattened her hands on her thighs, then pulled them away and fisted them instead, worried about wrinkling the fabric. Given that her trousers had spent the night on Kanan’s floor, there wasn’t much chance that her hands would have any effect, but she couldn’t help herself. Cadet uniforms had wrinkled if you so much as breathed on them. “If he had wanted you, he would have said. I don’t need –” She let her breath out, trying not to gasp. “I love you, but having you there wouldn’t help.”

“Okay,” Kanan said, leaning down to press a kiss to the side of her forehead, just beneath the band of her cap.

“Thank you,” Hera said. “For offering. And understanding.”

“You’ve done the same for me before,” he said quietly, finishing up the second wrapping.

Hera turned, breathing out, and reached up to pull him down into a kiss. “Thank you,” she said again.

Kanan kissed her back, light. “Yeah,” he said when he pulled back, his gaze serious. “Anytime.”

Hera made herself smile for him and patted his cheek. “Save some breakfast for me,” she said. “Especially if Zeb’s cooking. _Not_ if Sabine’s cooking.”

“You got it.” He leaned down and kissed her forehead. “Say the word and I’ll gut him for you.”

“Love, you always say the sweetest things.” Hera glanced quickly around the cabin, then down at herself, tugging at the hem of her jacket before realizing that she wasn’t wearing her cuirass or sidearm. Damn. Well, she was in full uniform even without them; there was nothing Kallus could write her up for.

She kissed Kanan again, resting her hands against his bare chest – he hadn’t bothered to put a shirt on before following her – then pulled away, saying, “I’ll be back as soon as I can. Agent Kallus probably just wants to yank my chain; I doubt anything interesting has happened with the op since last night.”

*

Ahsoka reclaimed the pilot’s seat from Sinthya Syndulla once they were back in the _Aegis_ , letting the engines warm up as the other woman went into the back of the ship to exclaim over her niece. Or cousin. Ahsoka wasn’t entirely certain of their exact relationship, just that they were related through the intricate web of familial and clan ties that seemed to connect every Twi’lek on Ryloth. At some point the details hardly mattered.

Ahsoka kept the Imperial communications channels open as she lifted the _Aegis_ out of the hangar bay. Aside from the approach and departure vectors leading to the spaceports, airspace over Theed was strictly regulated; there was a TIE flight flying patrol showing up on her boards, but aside from that and a few incoming freighters the night was quiet. She kept to the departure vector all the way out of the planet’s atmosphere, half-aware of the babble of excited voices in the back of the ship. As the _Aegis_ emerged from Naboo’s airspace, a TIE flight went screaming by, making Ahsoka’s hands tighten on the control yoke until they had passed her. Just a couple of flyboys buzzing a civilian ship, she thought, glancing up through the viewport at the bulk of the star destroyer in space before them. Idiots.

She angled away from the star destroyer, the same way any nervous civilian would do, and told QT-KT to calculate hyperspace coordinates that would put them back at the fleet after no fewer than three jumps in and out of hyperspace. At the astromech’s curious query, she said, “If the Empire is tracking Siren – Ojeda – I don’t want to lead them directly back to the Free Ryloth fleet.”

QT-KT chortled in understanding. As she started calculating the coordinates, Ahsoka looked at the curve of the planet outside the left side of the viewport, then waved the cockpit door open with a whisper of the Force and called back, “Ojeda, come up here, will you?”

There was a moment of silence, then she felt the girl approach, though she couldn’t hear her light step on the deck. Doriah Syndulla’s heavier tread followed, stopping in the doorway as Ojeda came uncertainly into the cockpit.

“Yes?” she said.

“Come here.”

Ojeda moved forward, sliding into the co-pilot’s seat as Ahsoka gestured towards it. Her eyes widened as she looked out the viewport, taking in the vastness of space, the ocean of stars, and the moons in the distance.

“Ojeda,” Ahsoka said.

The girl was still staring out the viewport, her full lips parted slightly in wonder. She didn’t look over until Ahsoka said her name again, then she glanced quickly sideways, her expression shy. “I’ve never seen it before,” she said. “I didn’t want to look out the window when we left Ryloth – Hera kept me up the night before telling me about all the things that could go wrong on a space flight and I was afraid. After that – this is the first time I’ve ever seen it.”

Ahsoka nodded in understanding. She pointed out the viewport, down towards the receding curve of the planet. “That’s Naboo,” she said. “That’s where you were.”

Ojeda followed her pointed finger, her huge eyes going even wider. She parted her lips as if to speak, then just shook her head, staring.

QT-KT chirped to tell Ahsoka that she had finished calculating the coordinates. A moment later they appeared on the screen in front of her; Ahsoka checked them and nodded. It would be a long way back, but she didn’t think anyone would mind, not with what the Syndullas were going home with.

Ahsoka reached for the hyperspace lever. The sudden movement made Ojeda look quickly at her, before her gaze went back to the planet. “We’re leaving now,” Ahsoka said. “You’re leaving. You don’t ever have to go back.”

Ojeda seemed transfixed by the green and blue shape that was Naboo, leaning over so that she could peer out at the side viewport where it curved around the front of the cockpit. She was still staring at it when Ahsoka pulled the hyperspace lever down. The stars blurred into lines – and Ojeda burst into tears.

She raised her hands to her face to scrub at her tears, but she was crying too hard, her breath coming in gasping sobs as she bent over. Doriah crossed the small compartment quickly and crouched down beside her, putting his arms out, and she collapsed into him, sobbing against his shoulder as he held her close and murmured in Twi’leki against her ear.

Ahsoka made her steps as soft as she could as she left them, a pair of small, broken-hearted figures silhouetted against the enormity of hyperspace beyond the viewport. The door slid shut on the sound of Ojeda’s weeping and Ahsoka stood still in the narrow corridor, clenching her fists at her sides as she breathed out. Whatever else happened, at least the day wasn’t a loss. She had gotten at least one lost soul back to her family, and some days, despite the enormity of the galaxy, that was enough.

*

The nearly-empty hallways of the Imperial Complex seemed to swallow up Hera’s bootsteps as she made her way to the office Agent Kallus had taken for his own. Occasionally she passed stormtroopers on patrol or droids on early morning duties, but aside from that there was no one else to be seen – she might have been the only living being in the Imperial Complex, anonymous and masked as the troopers were behind their helmets. It was early enough that the sun wasn’t even up; the complex hadn’t yet begun to wake.

She paused in front of the closed door to smooth down the front of her uniform, tugging anxiously at her gloves before she touched the door-chime. Kallus’s voice called, “Enter,” and Hera found the control for the door.

It slid open to reveal a large, mostly empty office like the one she and Kanan had been in the other day. Kallus was seated behind a curved desk at the far end of the room, looking at a hologram of several dozen starships and making notations on a datapad. He kept working on it as Hera approached.

She came to a stop and clasped her hands behind her back. “Agent Syndulla, reporting as ordered, sir.”

Kallus ignored her for long enough that Hera felt her heart quicken, though she tried her best to keep her breathing steady. She couldn’t do anything about the way her lekku had tightened, but hopefully Kallus didn’t know Twi’leks well enough to notice that.

“I’ve just heard from Naboo,” he said, looking up as he finally shut the holo off and set his datapad aside. “Roberto Beneke was found dead in his office an hour ago.”

For a moment Hera thought that she had heard him wrong. “Wh-what?”

“Roberto Beneke is dead,” Kallus repeated. “He was murdered sometime last night – shot in the head at close range.”

Hera put a hand to her mouth, barely aware of making the gesture. “Who –” she started, but the thought stuttered out before she could finish. “How – I – are you sure? Sir,” she barely remembered to add.

“Very,” Kallus said. He touched a control and a hologram sprang up between them – Agent Beneke’s office on Naboo, which Hera knew very well, and his chair and his desk and – and –

She gagged and turned aside, biting down on the side of her hand and tasting the bitter leather of her glove to keep from doing something she would regret. This couldn’t be happening. It couldn’t be, it wasn’t possible.

Agent Kallus had been watching her silently. When he seemed convinced that Hera wasn’t going to vomit on his floor, he said, “His communications logs indicate that he contacted your ship not long before he died. You were the last person he spoke to, Agent Syndulla.”

“He commed me,” Hera managed to say. Her accent was back, she realized; it took all of her concentration to get it under control, to smooth it out to the nothing accent of the Mid Rim as she went on. “After the briefing. He wanted –” She stopped. She couldn’t tell Agent Kallus what Beneke had wanted. “He wanted to make sure that I was all right with the op.”

“I’m sure,” Kallus said dryly.

“He was in his office?” Hera said. “In HQ? How – how did someone – did someone –” _Get inside_ , she meant to finish, but she had looked back at the hologram, somehow managing to look past the horror of Beneke’s body to the details. “His hands are bound.”

“Yes.” Kallus was watching her with narrowed eyes. “Security footage from the complex was wiped, but the guards reported that they had been distracted by a woman when they were incapacitated.”

“A woman?” Hera repeated.

“A Twi’lek woman. One of the Lake House girls.”

“I don’t understand what that has to do with –”

“The Flower of Ryloth’s real name is Ojeda Syndulla. I believe you used to be acquainted.”

For a moment all Hera could do was stare at him, Beneke’s murder gone completely out of her head. “Ojeda?” she whispered. “My cousin Ojeda?”

Hera knew about the Lake House, of course she knew about the Lake House. When she had been a cadet at the ISB Academy, she had known to stay as far away from the Lake House as she could, because it was places like that which taught her fellow cadets that nonhuman girls were only good for one thing. The other cadets had always wanted to drag her down there, convinced that with a few shots of liquor she’d remember her proper place in society. The Twi’lek girl there, the Flower of Ryloth –

_Ojeda. It was Ojeda. Oh, gods, it was Ojeda –_

Her cousin. Her responsibility. And Hera hadn’t known, had never given into peer pressure and gone to the Lake House and seen –

She wouldn’t wish her peers’ attentions on her worst enemies, let alone her sweet, gentle cousin.

She looked up as Kallus rapped out, “Agent Syndulla!”

“Sir,” Hera managed to say, the single syllable dragging at her. Ojeda was in the Lake House, her little cousin was in the Lake House, and Hera had to – Hera had to –

“The Flower of Ryloth never returned to the Lake House last night,” Kallus went on, his gaze fixed on her as Hera drew her breath in so sharply it hurt. “While the security system at the Imperial Complex was tampered with, a street camera near one of the smaller spaceports did manage to capture this image.”

Another hologram sprang up between them. Hera made herself look at it even though she wanted to do anything but, trying to order her mind as much as she was able and set Ojeda aside for now, except –

“Recognize anyone, Agent Syndulla?”

The angle the security camera had recorded at had only managed to capture half of the three-dimensional images; a few of them were faceless, only their backs and lekku visible. The others – Doriah she could see clearly, with a woman who had to be Ojeda tucked against his arm, and a Togruta woman standing a little ways away, her face shadowed by the hood of her poncho.

She managed to say, “That must be the woman Kanan saw on Lothal. Fulcrum.”

“And the others?”

“I – I haven’t had any contact with any Twi’lek rebel cells in more than a decade, Agent Kallus. I don’t know any of them.”

“No?” He tapped another control on his desk. “Because this hologram was taken on Lothal the night of the bombing. It was recovered from one of the damaged TIEs.”

It was Doriah, his face captured in profile and a little blurred from what must have been movement.

Hera clasped her hands behind her back because she didn’t know what else to do with them, digging her fingers into her palms and trying to think of something to say. Finally, she just said, “That looks like my cousin Doriah Syndulla. Sir. But I haven’t seen him since I was fourteen.”

“He’s wanted for murder,” Kallus observed, his voice bland. “Doriah Syndulla killed a Chandrilan nobleman six years ago.”

“I didn’t know that. Sir. I haven’t seen him in ten years.”

“Really,” Kallus said. “It’s just a coincidence that you and he were both on Lothal when the parade went up in flames a few days ago? It’s just a coincidence that you were the last person to speak to Agent Beneke alive?”

“Sir, I’m not responsible for anything my family does,” Hera said. “I’m not in contact with them. You can check the communications logs from my ship –”

“Oh, I will,” Kallus said. “Rest assured, Agent Syndulla, you and your team are going to be under very close watch these next few days.”

Hera tightened her mouth, unable to think of a good response to that. “Everyone on my team is loyal to the Empire, sir,” she said finally.

“That remains to be seen,” Kallus said. He shut off the hologram of Doriah and looked Hera up and down. “We’ve recently been made aware of the current location of the rebel fleet. You and your team will be part of that assault.”

 _The rebel_ – “The _Ghost_ isn’t a warship, sir,” Hera said, concentrating on that instead of anything else he had said, mostly because she didn’t want to think about it. “It’s not equipped for that kind of military action –”

“Are you refusing a direct order, Agent Syndulla?”

“No, sir, of course not,” Hera said quickly.

“A wise decision,” said Agent Kallus. “Pray that it isn’t the last one you make.”

*

Fulcrum’s shower was small but meant that she could be left alone, and Flower folded herself gratefully inside it, shutting the narrow door with a decisive click and leaning back against the tiled wall. She didn’t bother to turn the water on, just covered her face with her hands and tried to make herself breathe. Her whole body hurt, her eyes dry and aching from weeping and the weight of her lekku dragging at her neck. She was so tired that her vision had gone fuzzy at the edges; she couldn’t remember the last time she had slept, and the emotions and events of the night seemed to consume everything.

It felt like a dream, except that Flower had stopped dreaming about her family years ago. She had had to. It was what Star had never understood about the Houses: that you had to give it all up just to survive; try and keep anything for yourself and you wouldn’t make it. Or at least not for Flower. Star had always been able to keep that core of herself present, the part of herself that was still Zaidi Farseer, but Flower had locked Ojeda Syndulla away a decade ago and now she didn’t know how to get her out again. That scared little girl might as well be dead.

She rubbed the heels of her hands into her eye sockets, then turned to fumble for the unfamiliar shower controls. After a moment she managed to turn the water on, pushing it as hot as it was able to go, and stood under the spray for a few minutes, her eyes closed. Belatedly she realized that a ship this size probably didn’t have a large water heater, unlike the Lake House, and found the soap and a soft washcloth so that she could scrub at her skin. The soap didn’t smell like anything she used at the Lake House, harsher and a little spicy, and Flower scrubbed and scrubbed until her skin was nearly purple from rubbing and the temperature of the water was starting to drop, the memory of the clients she had had earlier tonight wiped away. She shut the water off and tipped her forehead against the wall, breathing hard and feeling tears prick at her eyes again. How could she _still_ be crying? Surely she didn’t have any more tears left.

Flower dragged the washcloth angrily across her face and pulled the shower door open, stepping out into a cloud of steam at odds with the cold air of the refresher. Fulcrum had shown her where the towels were and she dried herself off, using a corner of the towel to wipe some of the fog away from the mirror so that she could check her reflection. Her makeup had come off in the shower and she looked tired and a little scared. _You should fix that_ , she thought reflexively. _No one likes a tired, scared whore._

She was still staring at her reflection when there was a light knock on the door. “It’s Doriah,” he called before she had a chance to respond. “I’ve got clothes.”

“You can come in,” Flower said, finally looking away from the mirror.

The door slid open and Doriah put his head in, holding out the pile of fabric he was holding. Ojeda went over to take it from him, then hesitated as he made to go. “Could you stay?” she asked.

“Sure,” he said. “Don’t you want to change first?”

Flower shrugged. She was fairly certain that the entire officer corps on Naboo had seen her naked, it wasn’t as though Doriah made any difference. She had gotten past any body shyness she might have had a long time ago, not that Rylothean Twi’leks had much anyway.

Doriah stepped inside and let the door slide shut behind him. He perched on the toilet lid as Flower put the clothes down on the tiny counter and sorted through them, evaluating them with an experienced eye. They must have belonged to Fulcrum, who was about the same height and build as Flower. Flower was a little curvier, Fulcrum a little more muscular, but they would still fit well enough.

She dressed quickly, aware of Doriah sitting with his long legs stretched out in front of him. Only when she was doing up the last of the tiny clasps on the soft suede gauntlets that went with the sleeveless shirt did she turn back to him, seeing him raise his head immediately at the motion.

“Yeah?”

Before she could think better of it, Flower blurted out, “Why did they rescue you and not me?”

She looked away almost before she was done speaking, her cheeks burning. She’d given up on being rescued _years_ ago; it shouldn’t have mattered anymore. But –

“They didn’t,” Doriah said, his voice gentle. “Xiaan and I escaped. It took us a couple of months to find the fleet – we didn’t even know there was a fleet then, it wasn’t as though we were in the loop. We were trying to get back to Ryloth.”

Flower raised her gaze to him. “You weren’t at a House,” she said slowly. “You couldn’t have been. Xiaan was too young –” Six. Xiaan had been six when the colony had been destroyed. The only reason Flower had gone to a House at thirteen had been because the Pyramid House on Onderon was less discriminating than the Lake House; it didn’t mind having its girls a little younger than was legal, government-owned or not.

Doriah locked his fingers together in front of him, studying them with a faintly distracted air. “No. We were owned by someone else, a baron in the Imperial court – one of Palpatine’s hangers-on, the kind of guy who could staff his house and his yacht with nonhuman slaves and all his friends would just nod and take it as a fashion statement.” His mouth twisted. “The kind of guy who liked pretty Twi’lek boys.”

Flower couldn’t say anything about that. “What happened?”

Doriah shut his eyes, reaching up to rub at the cross-hatched scars on his forehead, which were only partially hidden by the headwrap he was wearing. “He had a friend who liked little Twi’lek girls.”

“Oh,” Flower said softly; she didn’t know what to say.

He shrugged, his mouth twisting as he looked away. “Turns out I did remember your mother’s lessons on how to kill someone.”

Flower winced.

Doriah rubbed at his scars again. “It was six years ago. And it’s not – compared to what happened to you –”

Flower shrugged; she had come to terms with what she was a long time ago, but she didn’t like thinking about Doriah and Xiaan in a place like that. She went over to him – the refresher was small enough that it only took a few steps – and waited until he stood up so that she could hug him. His arms went comfortably around her and Flower turned her cheek against his shoulder, closing her eyes.

“You don’t know?” she asked him without looking up. “About the others? My brothers? Nury?”

“We didn’t even know about Hera until a few weeks ago,” Doriah said. “We didn’t know about you until today.”

Flower nodded slowly, years of training keeping her from reacting any other way. Her brothers had been even younger than Xiaan when the colony had been attacked. She didn’t like to think about what the Empire would do with a pair of four-year-old twin Twi’lek boys, if they hadn’t simply killed them out of hand the way they had Doriah’s sister Lika.

“Thank you,” she told Doriah, then hugged him again and stepped back, tugging absently at one of the gauntlets she was wearing. She felt odd and uncomfortable wearing someone else’s clothes; most of her own things had been tailored to perfectly show off – or conceal – her body, and everything about this felt just so subtly _wrong_ , no matter how well it fit. Not to mention that it wasn’t anything she would ever have worn back at the Lake House.

“If there’s anything I can do –” Doriah said. “When Xi and I came back, they didn’t know what to do with us. My mother didn’t –” He stopped, his mouth tightening. “I wasn’t exactly what my mother had been hoping for.”

“Aunt Clotho’s alive?”

He shook his head. “She died.” He reached out and touched the door control, cool air from the hallway washing across Flower’s skin as the door slid open.

They followed the sound of voices into the lounge – not that there were exactly a lot of other options to go on a ship this size – and found the others sitting around the holotable. Xiaan was curled up on one end with QT-KT beside her, doing something with a datapad and occasionally having apparently one-sided conversations with the astromech, while Cham, Alecto, and Sinthya were all sitting down and Fulcrum was leaning against the wall. They all looked up as Flower and Doriah came in.

Flower licked dry lips and looked at Fulcrum. “I think there’s a conversation we need to have.”

The Togruta pushed herself off the wall. “Sooner is better,” she said. “If you’re sure?”

“She’s been through enough,” Cham said, straightening upright. “If she knew anything else she would have told your contact already, surely –”

“I know what I am, Uncle,” Flower said. “I volunteered for this; I don’t mind. I don’t need to be protected.”

“Ojeda –”

“I’ve had worse than just wanting to be asked questions, Uncle Cham,” Flower said. It’s all right.”

“If you want someone else there –”

That was the last thing Flower wanted. She shook her head and looked back at Fulcrum, who had been listening patiently throughout the argument. The other woman just nodded and said, “Let’s go into the cockpit.”

Flower followed her out of the lounge and back down the hallway, settling gingerly into the co-pilot’s chair as the door slid shut behind them. She glanced out the viewport at the strange blue lights of hyperspace, then quickly away, feeling a little nauseous.

Fulcrum sat down in the pilot’s seat and turned it towards her. “I’ll make this as fast as I can,” she said.

“You sound like some of my clients,” Flower said, and at Fulcrum’s raised brows, added, “I’m expensive.”

Fulcrum blinked, but said, “Hopefully that’s all we have in common. Are you sure you’re all right with this?”

“Yes,” Flower said. “What do you want to know?”

Fulcrum leaned forward, resting her elbows on her thighs and clasping her hands together. “Do you know the names of the other men and women in the Lake House? Their real names?”

“Some of them” Flower said, dropping her gaze for an instant. “I didn’t want to know, but Star – the Red Star of Zeltros – thought it was important. She knows all of them, she made me learn them.”

“Why didn’t you want to know?” Fulcrum’s voice was gentle.

“Because the girls and boys we were before we came to the Houses could never survive,” Flower said. “We have to be different people. They change our names, our looks, our accents, our clothes, everything about us. You can’t cling to the past. You’ll never survive if you hold onto it. We belong to the Empire.” She twisted around in her seat, reaching up to tug down the high collar of her borrowed shirt and show off the tattoo on the back of her neck. “If you can’t accept that, then you won’t live long enough to understand why it’s important.”

She pulled her shirt collar back up and turned back to Fulcrum, wondering if she had spoken too baldly. Even at the House no one liked to admit that. You didn’t think about why you were doing what you did, you just did it, and hoped that there was enough left of you to make it through the fire.

But all Fulcrum did was nod slowly. “I understand,” she said. “More than you know, I understand.”

Flower returned her nod, catching her lower lip between her teeth as she thought. “Star’s name was Zaidi Farseer,” she said finally. “She’s not from Zeltros, not really – I mean, she’s a Zeltron, but she told me that she was born on, um, Taanab, I think. Her parents were shopkeepers, they were arrested for treason about – eight years ago, I think. That’s how Star ended up in the Houses. She was a transfer too, she didn’t start on Naboo.”

“Do you know where she was before?”

Flower narrowed her eyes, thinking. “Corellia, maybe? I’m not sure. She arrived at the Lake House about a year after me, after I was already on the floor.”

“What about the others?”

“There’s Opal – the Blue Opal of Pantora,” Flower said. “She’s new, they only brought her in a few weeks ago. She’s my pillow girl. That means I’m responsible for her training.” She blinked. “That I was responsible for her training. I – I guess Star is now.”

“Her name?” Fulcrum asked.

“Khiry Chuchi.”

Fulcrum froze, her eyes going wide, and Flower stiffened in automatic reaction, every muscle tensed to flee. Except they were in space, there was nowhere to go, no bouncer to yell for –

“Khiry Chuchi,” Fulcrum repeated, her voice strained. “You’re sure that’s her name? What does she look like?”

Flower licked her lips, trying to force herself to relax, or at least to pretend that she had. “She’s sixteen, Pantoran, shorter than I am. Her clan markings –” She traced them on her cheeks, a pair of curving lines over each cheekbone. “She said her mother was a senator, that she had committed treason and was a criminal now, so all her property was forfeit –”

“No,” Fulcrum said slowly, her shoulders drooping. “No. Riyo Chuchi didn’t commit treason, and she’s not a criminal. She’s still an Imperial senator.” She let her breath out. “I guess I know why she voted against that bill now. Blast.” She rubbed a hand against her forehead. “The Empire must have taken Khiry to make her cooperate; I know Riyo’s family doesn’t have much personal security on Pantora. No reason to.”

“You know her?”

“I haven’t seen Khiry since she was eleven,” Fulcrum said. “But I know the family. Damn. I’ll have to deal with this sooner rather than later.” She shook her head, then rolled her shoulders back and sat up. “Go on. Tell me about the others.”

*

Ezra still wasn’t sure about the whole “living on a starship” thing, but he thought he could definitely get used to eating someone else’s cooking. He was passable – well, what he made was edible, at least, as long as no one else had to eat it, but this was _good_.

“You know, there’s more where that came from,” Sabine said, propping her chin against the palm of her hand, her elbow on the table. She was lingering over a mug of caf, still bleary-eyed from being woken up hours earlier. She had wandered back into the galley not long ago, claiming that she was only there to make sure that Ezra and Zeb hadn’t killed each other.

“Mmphhghh,” Ezra said, then remembered to swallow before trying to speak again. He waved his spoon and said, “I’m just, you know, appreciating it.”

“It’s nice being appreciated,” Zeb pointed out.

Sabine spread her hands. “ _I_ appreciate you!”

“Yeah, well, somehow you never seem to find your way through to saying so –”

Out in the corridor Ezra heard a door slide open, then a murmur of voices, the words muffled by the walls between them. Sabine raised her head, frowning. “Mom and Dad are up,” she said.

“About time,” Zeb said into his mug of caf.

Ezra went back to attacking the bowl of – well, he wasn’t actually sure what it was, but it tasted good, so he didn’t really care what it was called. He was scraping his spoon around the nearly-empty bowl, trying to get the last grains of food up, when the galley door slid open and Kanan came in.

His hair was down and he was wearing a loose red shirt over his trousers, covering a yawn with one hand as his gaze flickered quickly across the room. “Caf?” he said hopefully, and Zeb put down his own mug to pour a new cup for Kanan.

“Thought I heard Hera out there,” he said.

Kanan took a sip of his caf before saying, “Yeah, she got called in to talk to Agent Kallus again.” He took another gulp, apparently not noticing the way Sabine and Ezra both looked at Zeb. Ezra didn’t exactly know the details, but he wasn’t stupid; he had figured out that Zeb had something against that ISB agent he had seen when he and Kanan had arrived at the complex, the human one

Zeb took what was probably supposed to be a deceptively casual sip of his caf, the mug suddenly looking small in his big purple hands in a way that it hadn’t a few minutes ago. “It true what Sabine said?” he asked. “We’re actually going to have to take orders from that murderer?”

“I don’t like it any better than you,” Kanan said, his jaw tightening. “But orders are orders.”

“Yeah, but you don’t need to listen to him,” Zeb rumbled, low and dangerous. “You’re not ISB.”

“Trust me when I say that I would happily gut any of my superior officers for half a credit,” Kanan said. “So I’m pretty familiar with the feeling. Zeb, you can sit this one out if you want; Hera or I will figure out a way to justify it to Naboo so you still get paid.”

Zeb scowled. “You have any idea how it feels to take orders from the guy that ordered the genocide of your people?”

“I do, actually,” Kanan said, ignoring the startled glances of the others as he finished his caf and put the mug down. “Ezra. You doing anything right now?”

Ezra licked the last of the syrup off his spoon and dropped it into the empty bowl. “Uh, no. Not really. No.”

“Good.” Kanan leaned over to peer at the pot on the stove, lifting the lid off and stealing a spoonful before dropping the dirty spoon in the sink. “Leave some of that for Hera, will you? She’s probably going to be hungry when she comes back; she didn’t even get a cup of caf before Kallus hauled her in.”

“What’s he want, anyway?” Sabine asked.

“I guess we’re going to find out when Hera gets back,” Kanan said, his mouth tightening again. “Come on, Ezra.”

Ezra stood up reluctantly. Kanan seemed nice enough, but he couldn’t quite shake the memory of the Inquisitor who had chased him across half the city, the dark being who had faced off with Fulcrum in front of the ruin of Ezra’s old home. “Uh, where are we going?”

“To talk,” Kanan said. He dug in his pocket for a moment, then came up with a hair tie and pulled his hair back into a tail as the door to the corridor slid open before him. Ezra caught sight of something black on the back of his neck, the top just visible above the collar of his shirt, then Kanan dropped his hands and his hair covered it again.

As Ezra followed him out into the hallway, he heard Sabine say, “What was that about? Kanan’s human; it’s not like the Emperor’s ever tried to wipe _us_ out of the galaxy. He’d have to start with himself, for one –”

The door slid shut behind them, cutting her off.

Kanan led him down the short corridor into the cockpit, where he dropped into the pilot’s seat as Ezra sat down gingerly in the co-pilot’s chair. They stared at each other in silence for a few moments, Kanan looking like he was searching for words and Ezra fidgeting nervously in the chair; his feet didn’t quite touch the floor and dangled loosely in front of him.

“I, uh –” Ezra said finally. “I’m not really sure what I’m doing here. I’m not like Zeb or Sabine, I don’t…know things. About the Empire, or…anything. Except stealing things, I can do that. But you probably don’t want a thief.”

“Zeb and Sabine are Zeb and Sabine,” Kanan said. “You’re Ezra Bridger. That’s all I want you to be.”

Ezra shifted uneasily. “So…you’re going to teach me how to be an Inquisitor?”

Kanan jerked back as though he had been shot. “No!”

Ezra flinched at the sharpness of his voice, and saw Kanan wince. “No,” he said again, more gently. “Being an Inquisitor’s no fun.” He scratched his thumb idly against the inside of his opposite wrist, not meeting Ezra’s eyes, and said, “You don’t want that.”

“You’re one.”

“Yeah, well.” He shrugged. “Best of a bunch of bad options.” He rested his forearms on his knees and considered Ezra, his brows drawn together. “We’re sort of in the middle of something right now,” he said finally. “I’m sorry about that.”

“That doesn’t really seem like it’s your fault,” Ezra said cautiously.

“Maybe not.” They looked at each other again, then Kanan knotted his fingers together between his knees and said, “If you’ve changed your mind about being here –”

“I thought this was your idea in the first place.”

Kanan shrugged again. “I just want you to know that you have options.”

“What were yours?” Ezra blurted out. “You said that becoming an Inquisitor was the best of a bunch of bad options. What were the other –”

“Dying.”

“I thought you said there were a bunch of them.”

“Dying fast or dying slow,” Kanan said, and looked away. “There were a couple of gradations in between.”

Ezra didn’t know what to say to that. He kicked his heels in the empty air beneath the seat of the chair and the floor, looking out at the hangar beyond the _Ghost_ ’s viewport, and tried to get his head around the fact that he was in the Imperial Complex and not because he had been arrested.

“Well,” he said finally, making Kanan look back at him, “I don’t really have a whole lot of options. You saw the tower. And my parents’ house.”

“I did.”

“And it’s not like I’m getting off Lothal any other way.”

“Do you want to leave Lothal?”

Ezra shrugged. “I never really thought about it before.” He hesitated, and then added, “The Force. You were talking about –”

There was a sound from below and Kanan’s head shot up. Ezra was on the verge of leaping to his feet and grabbing for his slingshot when Agent Syndulla pulled herself up out of the hatch that led to the lower level of the ship. She looked blankly around at them as if she hadn’t expected to find anyone here.

Kanan stood up and went to her immediately, tucking a hand familiarly beneath her elbow. “Hey,” he said, his voice gentle. “What is it? What happened?”

Agent Syndulla raised her head to his, her mouth trembling, and Ezra saw tears start to run down her face before he looked quickly away. This felt private.

“Agent Beneke’s dead,” she said. “And I think my father was the one who killed him.”

*

_Five years ago_

By the time that Kanan was poisoned – the first of several occasions – he had been at the Crucible long enough that the days had blurred together. Mustafar had a regular day cycle, but the trainers at the Crucible didn’t keep to it; sleep cycles ran short and waking cycles went on for what Kanan’s internal chrono told him were hours longer than Coruscant standard. Sometimes it went the other way around. Either way, it left all the trainees dazed and confused, permanently both short-tempered and short of sleep. Not that they needed any help.

There were about twenty of them, sitting on the floor in one of the big open chambers within the Crucible. Kanan had positioned himself off to one side of the room, as close to an exit as he could get and with the best view possible of the rest of the room. It let him see the big Togruta with the scarred montral scratching his chin, bored, and the little Twi’lek girl who cried herself to sleep every night shivering with barely suppressed nervous energy. Other trainees sprawled or sat upright on the floor; one Rodian stood, bouncing from foot to foot and looking around at the entrances. If Kanan half-closed his eyes and shut himself off from the Force as much as possible, he could almost pretend that he was back in the Jedi Temple, in one of the training rooms with the other members of his cohort.

Kanan knew better than to do either, and he would have to be crazy to be mistaken that way.

He knelt with his hands on his knees, his eyes hooded and barely open. Half his lifetime ago he had tried to wall himself off from the Force, but now he breathed it in and breathed it out, felt it in the pulse of his heart and the flow of his blood in his veins. The Force was strong here on Mustafar, and he was aware that this deep in his meditation there was no real difference between the dark and the light; what he felt, what he _was_ , was neither one nor the other, merely the Force itself.

He was so deep in the Force that he was moving before he was consciously aware of the tremors in the Force, lightsaber off his belt and in his hands as he spun on the ball of one foot, slamming the igniting blade up through the chest of the Besalisk standing over him.

The Besalisk’s mouth opened and closed silently, then one of his four hands opened, his lightsaber deactivating as it dropped to the floor. Kanan felt the life go out of him in the Force, the weight of his body against his wrists as he went limp –

A cord went around his neck from behind, dragging him upright and sending his lightsaber flying out of his hands.

Kanan knew better than to yell, slamming an elbow blindly backwards and hearing a muffled grunt in response as he tried to get one hand beneath the cord. He saw the Togruta with the scarred montral come towards him, his lightsaber ignited in his hand. Kanan snarled, his breath scraping out through his teeth, and flung his free hand out.

His fallen lightsaber came rattling across the floor towards him; the Twi’lek girl made a grab for it but Kanan jerked his hand up and it went flying over her head instead, slapping into his palm in a Shien reverse grip as he ignited it and slashed backwards.

There was a yell and the cord went slack. Kanan pulled it away from his throat and spun, his lightsaber behind himself in the opening stance of reverse Shien, to see an Arkanian trainee he had tangled with before reeling backwards, clutching at her injured arm.

There was a flicker in the Force to his right and Kanan threw himself into a backflip, a red blade sweeping so close beneath him that it almost singed his leather tabards. He was already moving when he hit the floor, his lightsaber slashing outwards to beat back the Togruta’s two-handed blow. He heard another lightsaber ignite and slammed his free hand outwards without looking, the Force sending the Twi’lek girl flying across the room, bowling over another pair of trainees before hitting the wall.

The Togruta came in again; Kanan caught the blow on his blade, hissing through his teeth as the other man bore down on him. His opponent’s sharp teeth were bared in a rictus, all his attention on the lightsabers; Kanan brought his knee up into the other man’s crotch and his eyes bulged. He staggered back as Kanan disengaged and spun, breathing hard and ready for whoever was dumb enough to come next.

“Come on,” he spat. “What are you, afraid?”

There was a slow clap from the direction of the main entrance. “Well done, my brave Jedi,” said Patience. Two of her ever-present droids clicked their pincers in what was probably supposed to be applause. “You’re starting to like it, aren’t you?”

Kanan tipped his lightsaber up towards her, baring his teeth. “Why don’t you come find out?”

Her smile was silky. “Another time, Jedi.”

The Whip and the Hunter followed her into the room, the Whip taking in the dead Besalisk and the injured trainees with a dismissive flick of his head-tendrils. The Hunter’s gaze was fixed on Kanan, his lip curling in evident delight.

Kanan looked away, finally deactivating his lightsaber.

“Get this out of here,” said the Whip.

Kanan sank back to his knees as a pair of old cleaning droids came in to remove the Besalisk’s body. The other trainees were doing the same, the Twi’lek and the Togruta both picking themselves up off the floor to do so and the Arkanian taking her hand gingerly off her injured arm. Kanan dropped his gaze as he slid his lightsaber back onto the hook on his belt, resting his palms on his thighs and flexing his fingers. His earlier sense of peace had been shattered; all he could feel now was the blood rushing in his ears, his heart pounding frantically in his chest and the place where the Arkanian woman had tried to crimp his neck aching. Every muscle in his body was tense, waiting for the Hunter’s possessive hand on the back of his neck, but this time it didn’t come, and after a moment Kanan raised his gaze from the floor in front of him.

The three trainers were still standing by the door, but there was a silver-plated protocol droid moving amongst the kneeling trainees. Incongruously it bore a round tray and a collection of identical small cups, which it handed out to the trainees as it passed them.

Kanan eyed it with dread, his stomach sinking. He doubted that anything that the Crucible was handing out could possibly be good, but he knew better than to do anything other than accept it when the droid stopped beside him.

He looked down at the pale blue liquid as the droid moved on. It didn’t particularly smell of anything; he didn’t recognize it, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t something he had seen before. He knew by now that the Crucible wouldn’t hesitate to pervert something that the Jedi had used.

_Like you, Caleb…_

Kanan pushed that thought aside with an effort, looking around at the rest of the room. At least the other trainees seemed to be equally confused by the drinks, watching the Inquisitors and searching for some clue as to their purpose.

“You know if you’re trying to get us drunk, there are easier ways,” Kanan said. “You’re going to need a whole lot more than a shot for most of us.”

The Whip scowled, Patience’s expression was concealed by the face-plates on her helmet, and the Hunter smiled. That was all it took to make Kanan shudder and look away, prompting a nervous titter of laughter from someone he couldn’t see. Everyone in the Crucible knew about the Hunter and the Jedi. 

The protocol droid finished distributing the drinks, with one cup left over on his tray for the dead Besalisk, and tottered back to the trainers. The Hunter lifted the remaining cup and said, “All of you are strong with the Force.”

Kanan snorted. With Darth Vader gone, the only person on the entire planet strong enough to even get the attention of the Order – not that it mattered anymore, but it was the only scale he had – was him; every Inquisitor he had met so far was weaker in the Force than even the weakest Jedi.

The Hunter glanced at him again, lips curving in a slight smile. “Some of you stronger than others, but unwilling to touch your full potential.”

His stomach dropping, Kanan looked down at the cup in front of him, barely aware of the Hunter’s next words. He had heard about potions like these, drugs that could open a hesitant Force-user to the Force or shut them off from it. The Jedi never used them if they could help it, since they could do permanent damage if applied indiscriminately.

The Crucible wouldn’t care about that, of course.

He was still staring at the cup when the Hunter’s long fingers curled cool over the back of his neck, making him flinch. Kanan squeezed his eyes shut, knowing that the others were watching and not caring.

“Those of you in whom the power of the Force is weak may not survive this trial,” said the Hunter. “Those of you who are…”

Kanan looked up in time to see him smile.

He glanced aside, shuddering, and felt the Hunter stroke a finger idly over his neck. “Those of you who are,” the Pau’an went on, “will find this an illuminating experience. If you survive in body and soul.”

 _No chance of that here_ , Kanan thought. He already knew that no one walked away from the Crucible with their soul intact.

 _I want to go home. I want to go home, I want to go_ home –

The Hunter jerked his head upright, making him gasp. “I can feel your fear, Jedi,” he said, bending his head to Kanan’s ear. “And your anger. Every moment of every day, so strong that they are part of you. Embrace them. Let them become a part of you.”

Kanan couldn’t have spoken if his life depended on it, but he managed to make himself shake his head a little, a small, aborted gesture that he knew the Hunter had to feel, if not see.

He felt the Hunter’s disappointment thrum in the Force, then his grip tightened, making Kanan hiss in pain. “Drink it,” he said, his breath warm against Kanan’s ear. “What would Master Depa Billaba say to know that one of the Jedi Order’s chosen ones feared the Force so greatly?”

“You don’t get to say her name,” Kanan said through his teeth, but he picked up the cup anyway, staring at the blue liquid for a moment before taking it like a shot. He slammed the empty cup upside down on the floor in front of him, aware of the watching gazes of Patience, the Whip, and the other trainees. 

For a good thirty seconds he didn’t feel anything at all. And then –

Then he wasn’t in the Crucible anymore.

Kanan stood still, breathing hard and staring around at the halls of the Jedi Temple where he had grown up. It looked painfully normal, sunlight filtering in through the windows lining one side of the hallway, a pair of masters having a conversation at the opposite end of the corridor, a trio of younglings running past, a Knight and his astromech droid rounding a corner. Kanan stepped automatically out of the way as they passed him, recognizing the Knight immediately. Everyone knew Anakin Skywalker.

_Home. I’m home._

He looked down the corridor again, recognizing the masters after a moment – Obi-Wan Kenobi and Mace Windu. And the younglings –

_That’s me._

Kanan drew in a shuddering breath. His cohort had been so small as to be unprecedented in recorded history – the numbers of incoming Jedi had dropped to record lows in the decades before the Clone Wars. There had only been two other younglings in his cohort, though both Sammo Quid and Tai Uzuma had been a few years older than him. Kanan – Caleb – had either come to the Temple as an infant or been born there; he had never known which. It didn’t particularly matter in the Order.

He had been the only one of the three who had already been chosen as a padawan when everything had ended. Sammo and Tai had both still been in the Temple when Palpatine had ordered the genocide of the Jedi. They must have died there along with everyone else in the Temple. Along with the rest of the Jedi.

_This can’t be happening._

Kanan took a step after them before stopping himself. This _wasn’t_ happening. Whatever had been in the drink the trainers had given him, it couldn’t turn back time. This was all in his head.

For a moment he felt the vision flicker, the walls of the Temple fading to reveal that room in the Crucible – half the other trainees still sitting up, staring blankly into space, the rest twitching on the floor – and then he was back in the Temple, his hands flexing uselessly against his thighs.

It took him a moment to realize he wasn’t in his blacks. He was wearing his civilian clothes, his pauldron and armor on and his ponytail brushing against the back of his neck. Even his blaster was strapped to his leg, but when he looked down, he saw that he had his old lightsaber on the back of his belt and his new one on his hip.

“Caleb Dume.”

Kanan let his breath out, shuddering, and turned to see Depa Billaba standing behind him.

“Master,” he breathed.

There was a whisper of a hand across the back of his neck, making him snap to attention, but Depa Billaba’s smile was gentle. She raised a hand and brushed the backs of her fingers against his cheek; Kanan was shocked to realize that she was shorter than him. She had always seemed so powerful –

Right up until the moment Commander Grey had shot her in the back.

He saw Master Depa start as though she had heard the thought, her fingers stilling against his cheek, her mouth opening a little in shock. A single drop of red appeared on the white of her tunic, then a second and a third, then more, until it was a single, rapidly spreading amorphous stain that spattered across her tunic, her robes, her skin.

“Master!”

Kanan caught her as she staggered, lowering her to the floor. Beyond them, he could see Master Kenobi and Master Windu still deep in their conversation, Skywalker and his astromech pausing to join them, the younglings running back and forth, the sound of their laughter carrying to his ears.

“Help!” Kanan yelled. “Someone, please, help! They’re killing us!”

None of them looked up.

“Force help me –” Kanan whispered, trying to stop the bleeding with his hands, but he couldn’t find a wound, no matter how hard he searched. “Master, I can’t –”

She raised her hand to his face, her fingers trailing across his cheek. “Run,” she breathed.

“I can’t leave you,” Kanan said, covering her hand with his own. He saw blood running back down her wrist, staining her white-wrapped arms red.

“Caleb Dume, you must run,” Depa said. Her fingers curved over his face, well-loved and affectionate. “I’ll be right behind you.”

“Master –”

“Run!”

Kanan ran.

Bootsteps sounded behind him as he stumbled through familiar corridors turned alien, the lights out and bodies strewn across the floor. Kanan turned more than once, but all he could see were shadows, half-familiar figures silhouetted against the walls before lightsabers ran them through or blasterfire struck them down. Every time he felt for the lightsabers on his belt, but there was no one to fight, no enemy that he could see. There was nothing he could do but follow his master’s last command and run.

He didn’t see the body he tripped over.

Kanan fell heavily, catching himself with bloodied hands, and looked up to find himself staring into Hera’s open eyes.

“No,” he gasped. “No –”

He scrambled over to her on hands and knees, catching her shoulders in his hands and rolling her over onto her back. “Hera, Hera, no – Hera –”

Her eyes were wide, unseeing, her head and lekku limp. Kanan couldn’t find a wound on her, running his hands down her familiar body, trying desperately to reach out to her with the Force, to find something, anything –

Footsteps approached, heavy and foreboding on the durasteel floor of the _Ghost_ ; Kanan didn’t know when he had left the Temple but they were in the cockpit now. As he looked frantically around, he could see Chopper lying on his side near the hatch, all his panels blown open, one of his ocular receptors shattered. Kanan clenched his fingers in the front of Hera’s shirt, begging her silently to open her eyes.

The doors in front of him slid open and he looked up across Hera’s body to see Darth Vader standing there.

Kanan was on his feet again before he could think, snatching his lightsabers from his belt and ignited them, blue and red blades illuminating the dark space around him, emphasizing the shadowed hollows on Hera’s face.

Vader looked back at him impassively, then ignited his own lightsaber.

“You won’t touch her,” Kanan said. “I won’t let you touch her –”

Vader took a step forward –

– and Kanan was back on Mustafar.

He was still holding his lightsabers, the blades illuminating the space around him. He stared around blankly, searching for Hera, for Depa, for Vader, but all he could see was the vast building complex of the Crucible – no, it wasn’t the Crucible. It was the same complex but it wasn’t the Crucible, not yet.

And the Force was screaming.

It was enough to stagger Kanan. He stumbled backwards, catching himself with a hand against the burning hot side of a building, and caught a flicker of flashing blue out of the corner of his vision. He looked up, following it to see a light-clad figure leap backwards onto a pipe, their opponent following them a moment later. Both had lightsabers – blue lightsabers. Jedi lightsabers.

 _This has already happened_ , Kanan thought, deactivating his lightsabers and returning them to his belt. He looked around, then flung himself upwards, catching hold of one of the many pipes running back and forth across the complex and letting his momentum carry him around it before he leapt again, trying to follow the figures. He couldn’t see who they were, but something inside of him hummed with recognition; whoever it was, he knew them, had lived under the same roof as them, had spoken to them –

The Force was awash with darkness; Kanan could barely pick his way through it, couldn’t rely on it to tell him anything. He looked away, heat washing over his face, but found himself drawn back to the duelists, to those two flashing lightsabers. He felt his way from roof to roof and pipe to pipe, barely able to see through the haze that lay over the complex but following the flash of the lightsabers in the red gloom until they came together in a blinding clash that shook the Force. The shock wave sent Kanan reeling backwards; he slipped and fell, grabbing blindly outwards, but his fingers missed and he fell, down down down towards the devouring lava beneath him, a scream on his lips –

He hit the floor of the training room in the Crucible hard enough that the jolt reverberated through his whole body, but he was barely aware of that because all he could feel was the Force. It was – everything, everywhere, and Kanan couldn’t contain it. There was no veil between him and the Force and he felt it stretching out around him, felt every heartbeat of every living being on Mustafar, in the star system, beyond, felt the reverberating echo of what had happened here ( _you were my brother! I loved you!_ ), felt the death of the Jedi scream in the Force – once, twice, again, an endless cycle of death and dying and betrayal, felt the death of a planet, a star, a system. So much death, so much dying, _death, yet the Force, death, yet the Force, death_ –

__

_emotion, yet peace_  
            _the yawning darkness_  
                    _ignorance, yet knowledge_  
                              _I’ll be right behind you_  
                                        _passion, yet serenity_  
                                                  _the death of worlds_  
                                                            _chaos, yet harmony_  
                                                                      _let them hunt me_  
                                                                                _death, yet the Force_  
_you have become the very thing you swore to destroy_

It screamed in his head, all of it, echoing backwards and forwards through time and space, all of it here and now and _inside him_ , get it out, get it out, he had to get it out –

He dragged his fingernails down his face, digging into the skin, trying to get through to the bone, _get it out get it out GET IT OUT_.

No mortal had ever been meant to know this. There was no veil between him and the Force, and no being alive could face that and survive. He had to get it out, he had to, he couldn’t live with it, he couldn’t, it would kill him, it would –

Hands caught at his wrists, pulled them away from his face. He fought blindly, trying to get free, he had to get it _out_ , had to do something, anything, he had to; Jedi were the Force made flesh but they were never meant to know this, get it out get it out GET IT OUT –

“What do you see?”

That voice. He knew that voice.

He could see it all, everything, _what happened to the other Jedi? they went mad and died_ , so much death, so much pain, the Force was rich with it, the Force needed it, craved it, fed off it, _you are a child of the light_ but there was no light here, there was just darkness and it pulled at him, dragged him down and he couldn’t, he couldn’t, he was the Force made flesh but he couldn’t, he wouldn’t, his master didn’t die for this make it stop make it stop make it stop _GET IT OUT_ –

Fingers gripped his chin, pulled his head around. “What do you see?” the Hunter asked again.

“Everything,” Kanan whispered. “This place – it’s a vergence in the Force. It’s a shatterpoint. Now – no – yet to come? I don’t –” Echoes of things that had already occurred, that were yet to come, worlds dying and Jedi dying and an endless cycle because the Force never repeated itself but sometimes – sometimes – “It’s like poetry,” he breathed. “It rhymes.”

He dug the heels of his hands into his forehead, aware of the Hunter’s hand still on one wrist. He could feel the Hunter’s mind against his, all his desires and ambitions and he couldn’t, he wouldn’t, he wouldn’t be that, he – he – 

“I won’t be your hound,” he spat, the only coherent thought he could manage.

The Hunter rested a hand on the back of his neck, long fingers curving around it. “You already are, Jedi.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Be aware that there's been a minor change to the Ahsoka and Barriss scene in Chapter Four, for reasons that will become apparent later.
> 
> As always, love and grateful thanks to my beta Xena, who continuously goes above and beyond.
> 
> I do daily progress reports over on Tumblr, under the tag "[daily fic snippet](http://bedlamsbard.tumblr.com/tagged/daily%20fic%20snippet)," if you want to keep track of what I'm working on or get a hint of what's happening in the next chapter or two.


	15. Nemesis

_Seven years ago_

A flight of TIE fighters soared over the rim of the caldera, sending a flock of sticklebirds scattering before them. Beneath them, scattered farmlands dotted the flat land of the caldera, created millennia earlier and now one of many oases of fertile land in the otherwise arid climate of Saleucami’s equatorial band. Saleucami didn’t exactly have much going for it; there were a thousand other planets in the Outer Rim with the exact same resources, but that hadn’t stopped the Separatists and the Republic from fighting over it during the Clone Wars. From above the scars of the old battles that had been fought were obvious; a star destroyer had cracked in half as it made atmospheric entry and the section of the ship where the bridge had been had bored itself into the ground on one side of the caldera. The other half must have fallen kilometers away.

“Skull Three, Skull Four, break left at my signal as we pass the destroyer,” Skull One said. “Skull Two, you’re with me; we’ll take right.”

_“Three, copy.”_

_“Four, copy.”_

_“Two, copy.”_

As the TIEs approached the ruined destroyer, Skull One dipped her wings and the four starfighters broke away from each other, Three and Four beginning to sweep a wide arc around the left side of the destroyer and One and Two copying the motion on the right. At the moment when they would have been directly over the center of what was left of the destroyer, the old flight doors at its center swung open and a dozen vulture droids emerged, arrowing upwards. If the TIEs had followed their prearranged path, then the vultures would have hit them dead center. Instead their response was delayed as they reacted to this change in plans.

“All wings, engage!” Skull One ordered sharply, bringing her TIE around and firing in the same motion. One of the vultures exploded as the flight split in two, half turning towards Skulls Three and Four and the other half towards One and Two. “They could have more down there, watch your backs!”

Then the vultures were on them, and there was no more time for talking.

The vulture droids might have been relics from a war a decade in the grave, but that didn’t mean that they weren’t effective, and it was everything Skull One could do to keep ahead of them, leaving part of her attention free to keep track of the other members of her flight. She spent her ship spinning sideways, the vulture droid tracking her with furious intensity until she suddenly dropped, the vulture’s laserfire slashing through the empty air where she had been an instant earlier to slam into another vulture. Skull One swung her TIE up and fired, shredding the vulture’s wings before it exploded in a hail of super-heated shrapnel.

_“They’re all over me!”_ Skull Two yelled, his voice pitching high in alarm despite the distortion of the comm. _“I can’t get free!”_

“Cut your engines!” Skull One said.

_“What?”_

“Just trust me!”

Two obeyed, momentum continuing to carry him forward but gravity suddenly exerting its inexorable pull. Laserfire cut through the air barely meters above his TIE; Skull One swung her TIE around and fired at its source, not waiting to see the vulture explode before she ordered, “Engines now, Two!”

They roared into life and Skull Two shot upwards as the two other vultures finally compensated for his earlier drop in height and fired at the point he would have been had he carried on his earlier path. He yelled in satisfaction, TIE spinning around to take out one of the remaining vultures while Three and Four swung around from the opposite side of the destroyer to destroy the last vulture. Three looked a little scorched around the wings and had a slight wobbled, but all the TIEs were still there, the vultures all destroyed. Skull One checked her boards hastily for more heat signatures coming from the destroyer, but it didn’t look like they had any more viable ships down there.

_“That was incredible, One!”_ Two said excitedly. _“I wouldn’t have thought of that, I –”_

His voice faded out along with the Saleucami landscape as the words _FLIGHT SIMULATION OVER_ superimposed themselves over what was suddenly pitch-blackness. Skull One let out her breath and reached up to push open the canopy of the flight simulator, emerging into the thin artificial light of the simulator room.

The other third year cadets in her unit were doing the same, hoisting themselves out of the simulator pods. One of them, an olive-skinned human male named Beric Uresti, kept on talking as if he hadn’t been interrupted by the end of the simulation.

“– nearly got vaped. Who was flying One? Triton? Yannick?” He looked around at the two other cadets, a muscular black-skinned girl and a red-headed boy.

“I was,” Hera Syndulla said.

All three cadets swung around to stare at her, Uresti looking like he was choking on his own tongue. “Wasn’t that impressive,” he muttered while Hetal Triton laughed out loud. “I was just about to do that anyway.”

“No, you were just about to get blown out of the sky, Cadet.”

The four cadets came to attention as a man in officer’s grays came into the room. Captain Haiduk looked them all up and down, then said, “Triton, Yannick, that was acceptable, though if that hit had been an inch to the left you’d have lost a wing, Yannick. Uresti, if it hadn’t been for Syndulla’s quick thinking, you’d be a smear on the horizon.”

“I had it under control, sir,” Uresti protested. “I didn’t need any help –”

“What Cadet Syndulla did wasn’t help, Uresti. There’s no such thing as help when you’re in combat. There’s only dying and not dying and what Cadet Syndulla did was keep you from _not dying_.” Haiduk turned towards her and Hera put her shoulders back reflexively, even though Haiduk was her favorite out of all her instructors here at the Imperial Academy. He was the only one who seemed to care more about her skills than about the fact she wasn’t human, though Hera suspected he just liked anyone who enjoyed flying.

From Uresti’s expression, he was thinking about continuing to argue, but they all knew better than to argue with an instructor, so instead he let his shoulders slump, saying only, “Yes, sir.”

Triton snickered again. Captain Haiduk looked disgusted. “I want your reports on the sim by 1800 today,” he said. “Remember, I saw the whole thing, so don’t try and talk yourselves up or take credit for someone else’s actions. That means you, Cadet Uresti.”

The boy gritted his teeth. “Yes, sir,” he said.

“Get out,” Haiduk said. As they all started to go, collecting their helmets from where they had been left by their simulator pods, he added, “Syndulla, wait a moment.”

Hera hung back obediently as the others left, fighting back her automatic jump of nerves. “Sir?” she said after the door had closed behind Yannick.

“I understand you’re all going to get your next assignments today,” Haiduk said. “Any idea where you’re headed after you finish with us?”

Hera relaxed slightly. “I put the Starfighter Corps as my first choice, sir,” she said. “Then the Navy.”

Haiduk’s mouth quirked a little. “Both would be fine choices, though you’d be wasted on a destroyer’s crew. It takes years to reach a command in the Navy, but in the Corps you’ll be in a cockpit right off. Especially with your flight test scores.”

He’d written one of her recommendations; Hera had considered all of her instructors carefully, trying to judge which ones would be able to write about her without too much bias. Captain Haiduk had been the only one she hadn’t hesitated over.

“That’s what I was thinking, sir,” she said.

“Well, if High Command has half a brain then that’s where you’ll be, despite your disability,” Haiduk said, making Hera bite her lip. By “disability” he meant her species. He looked up with irritation as the door slid open again. “What is –”

He stopped, momentarily stymied at the sight of the officer who had stepped inside. Hera came to attention and saluted.

Agent Beneke favored her with a nod. “No need for that, Hera. Captain, I hope you don’t mind if I borrow Cadet Syndulla for a few minutes.”

“We were just talking about Cadet Syndulla’s next assignment,” Haiduk said, giving the ISB agent a wary look.

“Oh, yes, I remember reading your recommendation,” Beneke said. He looked back at Hera, holding something out to her. “I thought I’d come and give you the news myself.”

Hera took the envelope, pulling out the folded flimsiplast. As she unfolded it, she was aware of both Haiduk and Beneke watching her, and tried not to display how nervous she was.

For a moment she thought that she had read it wrong, then blinked and read it over again. “I didn’t apply to the ISB Academy,” she said, trying to keep the disappointment out of her voice.

“The ISB?” Haiduk said. He plucked the letter out of her hand and read it over, then scowled. “Cadet Syndulla would be wasted on the ISB,” he told Beneke. “With her piloting abilities –”

“Her piloting abilities make her an ideal candidate, among her other talents,” Beneke said. He looked dismissively away from Haiduk and down at Hera, who raised her gaze to him and tried to smile even though it felt like her heart was being ripped out of her chest. “Hera, surely you knew that you were originally recruited for the ISB.”

“Yes, sir,” Hera said automatically, then shook her head and corrected herself, “I mean, yes, sir, but I was told that if I was a stronger candidate for one of the other branches of the service, my application would be considered –”

“It was considered,” Agent Beneke assured her. “You should be very proud, Hera. It’s not easy to get into the ISB Academy, but your scores have been exemplary over the past three years. You’re among the top candidates in the Empire.”

“Thank you, sir,” Hera said, rote. She took the letter back as Agent Beneke took it out of Captain Haiduk’s hand and passed it back to her. “I’ve got another class,” she added, even though she had a good half hour before she had to be there; simulator training had ended early. “Excuse me –”

“Of course, Hera,” Agent Beneke said fondly. Hera tucked her helmet – modified to fit her headtails – under her arm and nodded to both officers, then left as quickly as she could, Captain Haiduk’s voice already rising in protest behind her.

The nearest women’s refresher wasn’t far. Hera stepped into it, checking all the stalls quickly to make sure that there was no one else here, then locked herself into the one furthest from the door and leaned against the wall to look at the letter again. As she stared at it, a tear slipped down her cheek to run down the flimsiplast, making Hera scowl and wipe at her cheeks.

She had really thought that she was good enough to get into the Starfighter Corps, to fly, but now she was going to spend the rest of her career with both feet firmly on the ground, skulking around in corners and back alleys, and that was if she ever got into the field in the first place. In all likelihood the only thing she would ever fly now would be a desk.

*

_Present day_

It was noon when the Flower of Ryloth woke, or at least it should have been. She lay still in a bed that didn’t feel quite right, on a pillow that was too plump and sheets that smelled of a different soap than the one the Lake House used, and tried to figure out where she was. She had stayed overnight on outcalls before, even though the House frowned on it; some of her clients demanded that the escort they had booked for an entire night stay until morning, not only for the few hours it took for their bedroom endeavors. That didn’t feel right, though, Flower thought, rubbing the sheets between thumb and forefinger.

There was no one else in the bed beside her, but she could hear soft breathing from elsewhere in the room. Flower rolled over onto her side to face the direction it was coming from and opened her eyes, briefly wondering if she had fallen asleep in one of the other dormitories.

It took her a moment to realize what she was looking at, blinking in the shadowed darkness that came to her eyes as shades of gray.

She wasn’t in the Lake House at all. She was on the _Forlorn Hope_ , the Free Ryloth flagship, and back with her own people – her own family. With the ship packed full of people – Twi’lek refugees, she supposed, but she wasn’t entirely certain – there hadn’t been a spare room for her, so Flower had ended up in the same cabin as Doriah and Xiaan. By that point Flower had been too tired to question why they were sharing; they had all shared back at the colony, and at the Lake House they slept six to a room. Flower had spent enough nights sharing a bed with Star or Opal – the girl had only stopped crying herself to sleep in the past week – to wonder at the fact that Xiaan had climbed in with Doriah without protest.

They were both still asleep now, Xiaan wrapped in Doriah’s arms, her lekku falling over his shoulder. Flower pushed herself up slowly, folding the sheets back, and sat still for a few minutes, just looking around the small room. It was obviously lived in and comfortable; there was a desk in one corner and a battered holoprojector on the floor beside it. Posters and torn-out magazine pages were taped to the walls, and there were a pair of empty cups perched on a corner of the desk, clothes thrown over the back of a chair. The door to the refresher was only half-closed, emergency lights glinting in the reflection of the mirror.

After a moment, Flower stood up. She dressed quietly in her borrowed clothes and stepped into the refresher, sliding the door shut behind her before she turned the light on. She splashed water on her face before she remembered that she didn’t know if water was rationed on the ship; she didn’t know how anything worked, if that was all right. A ship like the Forlorn Hope had to be different than the Lake House.

She ought to try and go back to sleep, she supposed, but she didn’t think she could bear it.

She dried her hands and pulled her shirt straight in the mirror, painfully conscious of the circles under her eyes and the way her lekku were drooping. All of her makeup was back in the Lake House; even thinking of going out without it made her shudder. The Lake House liked all its girls perfectly made up – perfect in every way. Flower didn’t know if anyone here would mind, couldn’t remember what it had been like before, when she had still been a girl.

After a moment she left the refresher, turning the light carefully off behind her. She stood still in the gray darkness of the bedroom, looking at Doriah and Xiaan in the other bunk, and then finally crossed the room, finding the control for the door. Doriah stirred as it opened, but didn’t roll over to face her, and Flower slipped out into the corridor.

It was lit, at least. She looked first one way, then the other, but she didn’t know where anything was. She knew that Uncle Cham and Aunt Alecto had cabins somewhere in this corridor, but not which doors led to their rooms, and she didn’t want either of them now anyway.

She picked a direction at random and started walking, looking for any open doors that didn’t seem to open into anyone’s bedroom. It must have still been deep into the ship’s night cycle, because eventually Flower figured out that the corridor lights were turned low – that and the fact that she didn’t see anyone else.

It would be around noon in Theed now, she thought. Star would be dragging herself grumpily out of bed, if she had slept at all – she always stayed up whenever Flower had an outcall. By now they must have realized that she had never come home; it was possible that the entire house would be awake and alert.

No one had ever tried to run away from the Lake House, at least not while Flower had been there, but when she had been on Onderon the Glass Rose of Shili had climbed the back wall and fled. Flower still remembered being woken in the night by House security checking to see that everyone else was where they were supposed to be. She had heard that they had caught the Glass Rose at the spaceport, but didn’t know what had happened to the other girl. Nothing good, she suspected.

Flower walked aimlessly for what felt like a long time, passing a few small cleaning droids and a red-painted astromech, but no other people. Eventually she found a room with an open door that looked like a lounge of sorts, full of squashy couches and dark vidscreens. Flower stepped inside and found the controls for the lights, sitting down on a couch and pulling her legs up. She picked up a magazine – several years old, going by the date on the cover – and flipped through it, looking at the glossy speeder models and filled in crosswords without really seeing them. Eventually she put it down on her knees and stared at one of the blank vidscreens, trying not to think about what had happened. She should have been happy, she knew. Instead she just felt empty.

“Hey, Rila – oh, I’m sorry.”

Flower looked up at the words, blinking at the sight of the woman in the doorway. She was a tall, teal-skinned Twi’lek woman about Flower’s own age, wearing a beige headwrap and a sleeveless purple tunic over a high-necked black shirt.

“I thought you were someone else,” she said apologetically. “You came in with Syndulla last night, didn’t you? I’m Numa, I’m a friend of Doriah’s.”

“I’m the –” Flower had to stop herself, but it still took her a long moment before she could remember to say, “I’m Ojeda Syndulla. I’m Xiaan’s cousin.”

“You look like her,” Numa said. “Especially with the –” She gestured at Flower; it took a moment for Flower to realize that she meant her markings; the ones on her shoulders and forearms were revealed by her sleeveless top. “You’re one of the ones who was captured at the colony, aren’t you? Rumor is that Syndulla’s been looking for them. You.”

“Has he?” Flower said, with a sharp stab that might have been _he could have tried harder earlier_.

“Well, that’s the rumor.” Numa ventured further into the room. “Not that Doriah will tell me anything about it.”

“You’re a good friend of his?” Flower asked, not knowing what else to say. She thought that she vaguely remembered seeing Numa in the hangar when they had arrived last night, just before Fulcrum had hugged her briefly and left, but wasn’t certain. There had been so many new faces; she didn’t know who any of them were and all of them blurred together.

“I’m his wingmate,” Numa said. At Flower’s blank look, she clarified, “We’re in the same starfighter squadron.”

“Oh,” Flower said. She looked down, plucking aimlessly at the knee of her trousers.

Numa hesitated for a long moment, standing back on one heel, then said, “I can go if you want to be alone. I couldn’t sleep, I thought I’d see what was on the –” She waved a hand at the nearest vidscreen.

“No,” Flower said. “No, it’s all right. I – I’m still on Naboo time. I’d be getting up about now.”

“That’s rough.” Numa came in and sat down beside her, pulling at her fingerless gloves. “I’ve heard Naboo is pretty.”

“I suppose.”

Flower looked down at her hands. She was supposed to be good at talking to people, but – this felt like the exact opposite of that. She had been trained to talk to clients, she had taught herself to talk to the other girls in the House; she didn’t know how to talk to people.

With an effort, she made herself say, “How do you and Doriah know –” but before she could finish the sentence the wail of an alarm split the air, lights flashing both in the room and out in the hallway.

Flower and Numa both jerked to their feet. Flower clutched her hands to her chest, her heart pounding, and said, “What is that? What’s happening?”

Numa’s eyes were bright with excitement. “We’re under attack!”

*

Hera Syndulla had never seen the Free Ryloth fleet before.

It appeared in front of them as the Imperial task force flashed out of hyperspace, an oblong disc-shaped collection of mismatched ships of all shapes and sizes. From here, Hera could make out everything from hunter-killers and freighters even smaller than the _Ghost_ to a pair of large luxury liners, the kind of starship that allowed the wealthy to travel from system to system in leisure. All of them were dwarfed by the massive capital warship that sat near one of the fleet’s outer edges, the former Separatist dreadnaught that had somehow made its way into Cham Syndulla’s hands.

Hera didn’t recognize any of the starships, but she hadn’t expected to. By the time Cham Syndulla had left Ryloth, Hera had already been finishing up her first year at the Imperial Academy on Serenno; she still remembered walking out of one of her final exams to find Agent Beneke waiting for her in the hallway, where he had taken her straight into an interrogation with several other ISB agents. It had been useless, of course. By then Hera had neither seen her father nor set foot on Ryloth in more than two years.

She had heard about the Free Ryloth fleet before, of course; it was a frequent feature in general ISB reports about the current state of insurgency in the galaxy. Every time some sort of rebel activity in the Outer Rim could be traced back to it she got a comm from Naboo, purely on the off chance that she knew something about a fleet that hadn’t even existed when she had left Ryloth.

Knowing about it was different than seeing it. Hera hadn’t known what she had expected, but somehow it wasn’t this motley collection. _My parents are out there_ , she thought with a sharp pang. _My parents and Doriah and Xiaan –_

_My people –_

No. Her people were here.

From the bridge of the star destroyer _Relentless_ , Hera watched the Free Ryloth fleet start to react to the appearance of the Imperial task force – three star destroyers and half a dozen cruisers, along with the accompanying TIE wings. And one small freighter.

The _Ghost_ hadn’t jumped with the task force, but Hera expected it to arrive any moment now, tucking itself into hiding amidst the ring of ice and rock that encircled the big gas giant in the system, where it wouldn’t be picked up by any of the Free Ryloth scanners. Kanan was a good enough pilot to manage that without difficulty, but it still made Hera’s lekku twitch; her place was with her ship, with her crew. Even if her ship would have looked more at place with the rebel fleet than it did with the task force.

She had said as much to Agent Kallus. _No, Agent Syndulla, your place is wherever I say it is._

“Attention, rebel fleet,” Kallus said, and Hera turned her head slightly to watch him. He was standing at the front of the bridge with the commander of the _Relentless_ , Admiral Konstantine, whom Hera had met briefly when she had come aboard at Lothal. “This is Agent Kallus of the Imperial Security Bureau. All ships are ordered to stand down and prepare for boarding or be destroyed.”

_“Hera, we’re here,”_ Kanan’s voice said in her earpiece, and Hera let out a breath she hadn’t known she had been holding. She couldn’t see the _Ghost_ from here, but knowing that it was somewhere out there eased the tight knot of tension in her chest a little. At least there was someone here who was squarely on her side, no matter what happened.

“Hold position as ordered, _Ghost_ ,” she said, seeing Kallus’s gaze flicker quickly towards her as she spoke. “Don’t engage without my order.”

_“Acknowledged, Spectre Two.”_

Kallus’s gaze had gone back to the Free Ryloth fleet, which was moving from a disc shape into a protective formation that Hera couldn’t make out yet. “Launch fighters,” he ordered. “Make sure Lieutenant Fenn is in the first wave.”

_Fenn?_ Hera thought as the order was conveyed down to the TIE pilots waiting in the launch hangars. _Why do I know that name?_

*

“Who is it?” Cham demanded, holding his comlink with one hand while he tugged his lekku free of the shirt he had just pulled on with the other. “Is it the Empire?”

_“Yes, General. Three star destroyers, twice as many cruisers. They’re launching TIEs now.”_

“I’m on my way to the bridge, Lieutenant. Has Captain Secura –”

_“I’ve just gotten here,”_ Mishaan said, cutting into the call. She sounded breathless, but if she had been sleeping before the emergency alarms had gone off, she was wide awake now. _“I’m calling battle stations.”_

“Cham!”

He turned towards Alecto, who had just barreled out of her cabin and was still stuffing her lekku into her flight cap. “It’s the Empire,” he said in response to the question she hadn’t asked yet. “Get the fighters in the air, we’ll swing around so we can cover the fleet while they jump to hyperspace.”

She nodded grimly, her jaw set. All around them, the sound of the alert changed, Mishaan’s voice coming over the ship-wide intercom. _“Battle stations, all hands to battle stations –”_

Behind Alecto, Doriah and Xiaan came out of their cabin, Doriah in his flight suit, dipping his head briefly to Xiaan’s as she laid a hand on his arm.

Even ten years ago, when they had both been furious with each other, Alecto might have still kissed him goodbye; fifteen years ago she had done so before every battle during the Separatist occupation of Ryloth. Thirty years ago she would have pushed him against the wall and made the kiss count, just in case it was their last – she had still been a competitive pod racer then, and there had always been a good chance she wouldn’t walk away from her next race breathing.

But today they just stared at each other, until the alert started blaring again and Alecto started as though she had forgotten they were at war. “I have to get to the hangars.”

“And I have to get to the bridge,” Cham made himself say. He reached out for her, caught her shoulder briefly in his hand, and felt her let out a shuddering breath. “Alecto –” He didn’t know what to say, and finally compromised with, “Be safe.”

She gave him a tight smile. “I’ll give them hell, Cham.”

He released her, and she turned to run down the hallway, following Doriah, who had left Xiaan behind at her door. She wrapped her arms around herself, looking small and miserable and alone in her pajamas. She raised her head as Cham approached her. “I have to find Ojeda,” she said. “She’s not here –”

Cham felt a moment of fear, but the alarms had muted all of his other motions. “She doesn’t know any of the protocols,” he said. “Stay with her once you’ve found her. I’ve got to go.”

Xiaan nodded, looking a little more sure of herself now that she had something to do. She leaned up quickly to kiss Cham’s cheek, then dashed back into her room.

Cham turned and headed for the bridge at a run, arriving to see Mishaan pacing in front of the captain’s chair, cracking her knuckles one after the other. She glanced up as he came in, nodding shortly.

“What do we have?” Cham asked.

Mishaan passed him a datapad. “Star destroyers and carriers are moving in to cut off our routes of escape, so we’re using protocol esk. _Morning Star_ and _New Dawn_ are going to jump first, then the civvies will jump in order; we and _Mercy Kill_ will hold the rear.”

“Good,” Cham said. “Good choice.”

“Oh, and the Imp commander tried to broadcast an order to surrender. We kept it from getting out, but if you want to talk to him –”

He held out his hand for the comlink without waiting for her to finish the sentence. Mishaan passed it to him, and Cham raised it to his mouth. “This is General Cham Syndulla of Free Ryloth. To whom do I have the pleasure of denying a victory?”

_“General Syndulla. I don’t believe we’ve ever spoken before. I am Agent Kallus of the Imperial Security Bureau, and I have the pleasure of demanding your surrender and that of your fleet. You may either surrender,”_ Agent Kallus said, _“or be destroyed.”_

“Free Ryloth will never surrender to the Empire,” Cham said.

_“Then you will be destroyed,”_ Kallus said, and cut the connection.

Cham lowered the comlink, and met Mishaan’s gaze. She raised an eyebrow, her scarred mouth quirking slightly in something that wasn’t quite a grin. “In the mood to be destroyed, General?” she said.

“Not today, Mishaan,” Cham said. “Not today.”

*

Xiaan ran through the familiar halls of the _Forlorn Hope_ , the alarms blaring in her ears and drowning out the clatter of her booted feet – she had taken the time to get dressed after Doriah had gone. _If I was Ojeda, where would I have gone –_

It hadn’t been that long ago that she and Doriah had first come to the fleet, and she could still remember how huge the _Hope_ had seemed to her then, the seemingly endless corridors a vast labyrinth where she had been half-convinced monsters lurked. When she had brought it timidly up to Doriah’s mother, Aunt Clotho – who wasn’t really her aunt by blood – had joked that you never knew, Cham was worried about the ship being boarded and a few lyleks certainly would surprise any Imperials who tried. She had spent the next three years convinced that Cham had done just that.

“Xiaan!”

She jerked to a halt, turning towards the open door she had nearly dashed past, which turned out to be the pilots’ lounge. Ojeda was standing there with wide eyes, her hands clenched tightly on either side of the doorframe.

“I was looking for you!” Xiaan said with relief, stepping out of the hallway and into the lounge as several crew members ran past, half of them still in their nightclothes. There was a gunnery station around here somewhere. “Are you all right?”

Ojeda nodded, her eyes still huge and frightened. “Is it the Empire?” she asked.

Xiaan nodded. “Don’t worry,” she said. “This isn’t the first time they’ve caught up to us. Uncle Cham has a plan for the fleet to get away.”

Ojeda wrapped her arms around herself. “Is it my fault?” she asked, her voice small. “Are they here because of me?”

Xiaan shook her head. “We checked you for trackers, remember? They probably worked out that it was us in the ISB building. The fleet’s not that easy to find, but you can do it if you’re really looking.” She frowned for a moment, lost in memory. “Doriah and I did.”

They both jumped as the alarms sounded again, then Xiaan felt the deck tilt under her as the _Forlorn Hope_ turned sharply. Ojeda gasped, putting a hand out to brace herself on the wall. “What’s happening?”

“We’re turning to go broadside on towards the enemy,” Xiaan explained. “The _Hope_ ’s the only real warship in the fleet, we always cover the retreat for the civilian ships.”

Ojeda looked horrified. “They’re going to be shooting at us?”

“Don’t worry, the ‘fighters will keep the TIEs off us,” Xiaan said. Ojeda didn’t look reassured by this revelation.

Xiaan took her hand and said, “Come on, let’s go up to the bridge.”

“The bridge?” Ojeda echoed as Xiaan pulled her out of the lounge, looking up and down the corridor to see if anyone else was running to their stations. The ship’s civilian residents knew what to do when they were under attack – stay in their quarters, well out of the way, unless the _Hope_ was boarded. Then everything would change.

Everyone on the _Forlorn Hope_ had fought for Ryloth’s freedom, had chosen to leave Ryloth rather than live under the Empire when it had come to that. If the Empire ever boarded this ship, they would have to fight for every inch of it, and the decks would run red with blood before the end. Every man, woman, and child on the _Hope_ would die before they went back beneath the Imperial yoke. Xiaan would. It was why she had strapped on one of Doriah’s blasters before she had left their rooms; she would put the pistol to her own head before she let that happen.

“Won’t we be in the way?” Ojeda asked as they hurried down the corridor.

Xiaan shook her head. “They’re used to me.” The ship tilted again, just enough that Xiaan could feel the engines humming beneath her feet, the whole ship seeming to vibrate. She tried to picture the battle in her head, what might be going on out there. It was what Doriah would be seeing from the cockpit of his starfighter.

Xiaan couldn’t think about Doriah right now. There was nothing she could do for him when he was out in the blackness of space, staring down TIEs from his aged and patched-together Headhunter.

She pulled Ojeda through the now-empty corridors of the _Hope_ , familiar to her after six years in space. She knew she had reached the bridge when she saw the six Twi’leks – four women and two men – standing guard in the hallway outside the door, all of them armed and ready to defend it in case the ship was boarded. They recognized her and stood back so that Xiaan could pass, Ojeda following reluctantly after her.

After the emptiness of the corridors, the energy of the bridge was a shock. They emerged into the big open space to find watch-standers at almost every station, Mishaan Secura ensconced in the captain’s chair and Cham Syndulla pacing restlessly back and forth in front of the viewport. He glanced over his shoulder at the sound of the door opening, nodding to Xiaan as he saw her.

Beyond him, she could see a welter of ships in space – as she had suspected, they were broadside on to the incoming Imperial ships, so that out one side of the viewport she could see star destroyers and out the other the ships of the fleet. Between them, starfighters met and clashed, laserfire streaking past them like a light show Xiaan remembered seeing when she and Doriah had been with the Baron’s household.

A starfighter tumbled past the viewport, close enough that Xiaan could see the green-skinned pilot through the transparisteel, then veered sharply away from the _Hope_ only to explode in a burst of flames that made her flinch. Ojeda gasped, clasping a hand to her mouth, but Xiaan only let out her breath. _That was a Torrent, not a Headhunter, that wasn’t Doriah –_

Doriah would come back to her. He always did.

She took a deep breath, then turned away from the viewport and caught Ojeda’s hand again. There was an empty comm station off to the side of the primary stations; Xiaan had used it before and when she reached it, found that it was still set up to her specifications. The communications watch-standers on the _Forlorn Hope_ ’s bridge crew all knew her, and hardly anyone else used this station when the other one was more convenient. Xiaan sank down into at the station, Ojeda taking the rarely used second seat, and leaned over to start turning everything on.

“Are you sure you should be touching that?” Ojeda said nervously.

“I know what I’m doing, remember?” Xiaan said; it was what she had told Ojeda when they had been in the server room at the ISB headquarters on Naboo, along with Doriah and QT-KT. It would have been nice to have the droid here now, Xiaan thought wistfully, but she had gone off with Fulcrum on her errand.

As the consoles hummed to life, Xiaan pulled a headset on, adjusting it over her hastily jammed on headwrap. Ojeda’s head was bare, she realized distractedly; of course Fulcrum hadn’t had any Twi’lek headwraps on the _Aegis_ and Xiaan hadn’t thought to offer her one. She would have to do that after this was all over.

“What _are_ you doing?” Ojeda asked.

“I’m scanning the Imperial communications frequencies,” Xiaan said. “They’re all encrypted, but sometimes I get lucky. And we’ve got some of the decryptions from the ISB, even though I don’t know if any of these ships will be using them. Hopefully.”

“So you’re…just guessing?” Ojeda said.

“No. If I can find one, then I can slice in. Or try to, anyway. There are a lot of maybes involved.”

“Oh.” Ojeda cast a doubtful look at the console, then looked back at the rest of the bridge, her wide-eyed gaze on the battle visible through the viewport.

For a fleeting moment Xiaan wondered if it was really real to her yet, or if it just seemed like something out of a holodrama, then she turned all her attention back to her work, tuning out the sound on the bridge as she concentrated on the computer screen and the varying buzzes of static in her ears. By now she knew what was empty air and what were encrypted transmissions. There had to be at least a dozen, she thought – their own ships, their fighters, the Imperials, whatever else was going on with them. Each squadron usually had its own frequency, and many of the ships in the Free Ryloth fleet would only talk to their own starfighters, not to the other Twi’lek fighters. She had heard Doriah and Aunt Alecto complaining about it frequently.

She scanned through frequency after frequency, barely lingering on each for longer than it took to identify the static in her ears and the readings on the screen, the program she had written scanning it against the known decryptions. She had barely had time to add some of the new ones that she had gotten from the ISB, and those would only work if the Imperial Navy, for whatever reason, decided to use ISB encryptions –

A previously red symbol blinked blue on her screen and Xiaan looked at it quickly, stopping herself from rolling onto the next frequency. Lights flickered across the screen as the incoming signal began to decrypt, the buzzing in her ears increasing, but now occasionally punctuated with words in Basic. A moment later the static dropped away, making Xiaan grin in delight.

“I’ve got one!” she said to Ojeda as her cousin looked over.

“Who is it?”

“I’m not –” She frowned in concentration, her eyes narrowing as she listened.

_“– you see, Spectre One?”_

_“The civvies are starting to jump to hyperspace. Your pal isn’t going to catch them all; he brought the fleet in at the wrong angle. All that frigate has to do is buy them enough time to get away.”_ The speaker was male, probably human, with a drawling accent that could have originated from anywhere on the Outer Rim.

The reply came immediately, a woman’s lighter voice with the nothing accent of the Mid Rim. _“He’s not my pal. And we don’t need to catch them all.”_

_“Seems like a waste of a good hyperspace trip, if you ask me.”_

_“No one did, dear. No one asked me, either.”_ The two went quiet for a moment.

They couldn’t be fighter pilots, Xiaan thought, frowning in puzzlement. Maybe there was a scout ship somewhere out there, hiding in the planetary ring where it would be hidden from both the fleet and the Imperial scanners? She knew that there was something odd about this system, something that could create ghosts on scanners, make it look like there were ships when there weren’t any there or hide ones which were; it was why the fleet had lingered here for so long.

Ojeda tugged on her sleeve. “Who is it?” she asked again.

“I don’t know,” Xiaan said.

“Brace for impact!” Mishaan Secura yelled suddenly. “Incoming ordnance!”

“What does that –”

Xiaan turned towards the viewport in time to see the incoming torpedoes streaking towards them, a pair of Twi’lek starfighters in hot pursuit. She grabbed Ojeda by the shoulders and pulled her down just as the first one struck, the ship’s shields flaring at the impact and the whole bridge shaking. Ojeda screamed, or tried to, but Xiaan pulled her cousin’s face against her shoulder to muffle the sound. Laserfire from one of the starfighters destroyed the second close enough that the shields flared gold again, but the third struck home. There was a crash from elsewhere on the bridge and a scream of pain, then a new alarm began to sound, though it only rang for a few moments before someone shut it off. The fourth and final torpedo exploded before it could hit, a starfighter streaking through the fireball.

“Everyone all right?” Cham asked into the silence that followed.

“We need a medic over here!”

Xiaan couldn’t see the speaker. She released Ojeda, who was trembling too hard with shock to straighten up until Xiaan pulled at her shoulder. “Are you all right?”

Ojeda just stared at her, her eyes wide, her lekku quivering.

Xiaan hugged her quickly, then scrambled back into her seat, reaching for the headset that she had lost when she had pulled Ojeda down.

“Are you just going to ignore that?” Ojeda demanded, her voice pitching high, her accent stronger than Xiaan had heard it before.

“What else am I supposed to do?”

“We could have died!”

Xiaan shrugged. Ojeda did not look reassured.

_“– one of the cruisers is hit,”_ the woman was saying in a business-like manner, though there was an edge of strain in her voice. Behind her, very distantly, Xiaan could just make out what sounded like a ship’s bridge going about the business of making war; she had to be on one of those star destroyers. _But not part of the crew, or she wouldn’t be talking to someone on another ship, not like that –_

_“You want us to swing over and –”_

_“Your orders are to hold position,”_ the woman said sharply. _“The cruiser has escape pods; the crew can use them if the captain deems it necessary to abandon ship.”_

Xiaan glanced at the viewport, trying to make out the damaged cruiser from here, but the Imperial ships were too far away for her to spy which of them it was.

_“If they’ve got guns out, Hera, we can take some of that heat off them long enough for them to survive to evacuate –”_

_“You have orders, Kanan!”_

“Oh my gods,” Xiaan said.

“What?” Ojeda demanded.

Xiaan looked around at the comm board until she found the switch she wanted, pulling the mouthpiece of the headset close. “Hera?” she said. “Hera, it’s Xiaan.”

*

Hera felt her fingers twitch for a control yoke as she watched the cruiser to their starboard side tilt downwards, venting atmosphere from a dozen places. One TIE started to go back to it, then seemed to think better – or realize that it couldn’t do anything – before turning towards the dogfight that filled the space between the Imperial task force and the remainder of the rebel fleet. Only a handful of the Free Ryloth ships had had a chance to jump away so far, but though Hera could tell from here that there had been damage done to those nearest, including the big frigate, none of it was enough to cripple or destroy them. Not yet.

It went against every fiber of her being as a pilot to watch ships fly into battle without her, to be stuck up here without even a station to operate. She didn’t have an assignment on the _Relentless_ ; if she had been on the _Ghost_ at least she would have had her crew and her ship and the order to watch and wait, but here all she had was a front row seat to a battle she couldn’t participate in. Agent Kallus wasn’t even paying attention to her.

Free Ryloth starfighters were coming back around to make another run on the damaged cruiser. Hera clenched her free hand into a fist at her side, watching as laserfire sprayed the ship. The other Imperial ships were ignoring it, their attention on the bulk of the Free Ryloth fleet as they surged forward, leaving the injured cruiser behind them. Only a few of the TIEs were attempting to keep the rebel ‘fighters away.

_“Hera, we’re in position, we can cover that ship –”_

“I said no, Kanan! Your orders are to observe, not participate.”

_“Technically, I don’t take orders from the ISB –”_

_“Hera?”_

The new voice was young and female, with a faint Ryloth accent. Hera blinked at the interruption, Kanan going silent.

_“Hera, it’s Xiaan. Is that you?”_

Hera froze.

_“Hera?”_ Xiaan said again, and Hera shut her eyes. Sixteen. Xiaan would be sixteen now; Doriah had said that she was with the fleet, that she had been with him when he had escaped. The last time Hera had seen her she had been six years old and terrified, clutching at her brother Nury when Hera had been dragged away at the colony. She didn’t know what Xiaan would look like now. Older.

_“Hera, will you just say something so I know it’s you?”_

Hera bit her lip, opening her eyes again to glance quickly around the bridge. No one else was paying attention to her, at least, so she stepped away from the viewport, moving to the side of the bridge where there were fewer people. “This is a secure frequency,” she said, aware that her voice was trembling, her accent starting to push through. “You have to get off.”

She heard Xiaan let her breath out. _“Doriah said you were with the Imperials now,”_ she said. _“Do you know he’s out there, Hera? He’s flying a Headhunter. So is Aunt Alecto.”_

Hera squeezed her eyes shut. _That’s not my fault,_ she thought, but she didn’t say anything. _None of this is my fault._

_“Hera, you don’t have to say anything,”_ Xiaan said. _“Will you just listen to me, please? Please don’t cut the line.”_

Hera didn’t respond, her teeth digging into her lip. Her finger hovered over the control on her comlink, but she didn’t touch it, her shoulders drawn tight and trembling.

_“I know none of this is your fault, Hera,”_ Xiaan said. _“So do Doriah and Aunt Alecto and Uncle Cham. I know the Empire hurt you, that they lied to you, that they made you think that you didn’t have any choice. I saw the vids from the Spire –”_

Hera’s eyes snapped open, staring in horror. Even Kanan didn’t know about that.

_“– I know that man lied to you, what he did to you, what he made you think. But you do have a choice, Hera. You can come home. Won’t you please come home? Please? We’re your family. Everyone else is gone, Hera, won’t you please come home?”_

She didn’t realize that she was crying until the first tear dropped off her chin and hit the top of her boot, a second following a moment later.

_“Hera, please,”_ Xiaan said again. _“I know you’re on one of those star destroyers or cruisers. Just get in an escape pod and I’ll tell Doriah and Aunt Alecto and they’ll guide you into the_ Hope. _Please, Hera, please –”_

“Agent Syndulla won’t be going anywhere.”

Hera drew in her breath on a sob as Agent Kallus reached over her shoulder and plucked the comlink out of her hand. “Which of the Syndulla brats am I speaking to?”

There was a long pause. _“I’m Xiaan Syndulla.”_

“Get your uncle, Miss Syndulla.”

There was a muffled whisper from the other end of the comlink. Hera bit her lip, staring blankly at the viewport in front of her. More than half the Free Ryloth fleet was gone now, fled into hyperspace, but one ship had been destroyed and two had clearly been badly damaged, venting atmosphere and spitting out escape pods. Sometime during the conversation, the two fleets had gotten close enough that the capital ships could exchange fire; Hera felt the deck waver beneath her, the _Relentless_ ’s shields flaring across the viewport.

_“This is General Cham Syndulla. What do you want, Agent Kallus?”_

“I am not alone, General,” Kallus said, glancing at her and holding the comlink out. “Isn’t that right, Agent Syndulla?”

Hera bit her lip so hard that she thought she was going to break the skin, then made herself say, “Hello, Father.”

_“Hera?”_ Cham Syndulla said, his voice changing. _“What are you doing there? Are you all right?”_

“That remains to be seen,” Agent Kallus said, drawing his sidearm. Hera caught her breath as the barrel settled against her forehead, the metal cool against her skin. “At the moment she’s alive. Whether she continues to draw breath is up to you, General.”

*

Cham heard Hera’s gasp. “Hera?” he said sharply. “Hera, what’s going on?”

His gaze went to the Imperial flagship, the big star destroyer near the front of the fleet. If she was with Kallus, then that was where she had to be – probably on the bridge. It was too far away from the _Forlorn Hope_ to make out any details, the two ships kilometers apart but growing closer by the second. His view of it blurred as the shields flared again, the _Hope_ shuddering under a torpedo impact.

Kallus’s response was almost lost under the sound of the alarm that followed, someone shouting a report from another section of the bridge. _“Tell him, Agent Syndulla.”_

Hera’s voice was small, her breath dragging out in gasps, but the words were steady. _“He’s got a blaster to my head.”_

Xiaan was still standing at Cham’s elbow, one hand braced on the back of Ojeda’s chair. “You can’t!” she said, clutching at her own headset. “She’s one of your own officers!”

_“As Agent Syndulla is well aware, the penalty for conspiring with the enemy in war time is summary execution,”_ Agent Kallus said. _“Isn’t that right, Agent?”_

_“Yes, sir.”_ Hera’s voice made Cham’s skin crawl, small and precise and resigned and almost lost in the frantic press of sound and fury on the bridge. Starfighters shot past the viewport, drawing Cham’s gaze back to the steadily nearing star destroyer. _Hera is there_ , he thought, and had to resist the urge to flinch as he saw the ship’s shields flare; the _Hope_ ’s turbolasers were firing on it. The frigate could go toe to toe with a star destroyer, but not for long. Their shields would fail before the destroyer’s did.

“She wasn’t conspiring,” Xiaan said frantically. “She didn’t even say anything, Hera, tell him! It was my fault!”

Hera didn’t respond. Cham gritted his teeth and said, “What do you want, Agent Kallus? You wouldn’t be going through this rigmarole if you didn’t think you could gain something from it.”

Over in the main body of the bridge, Mishaan called crisply, “All civilian ships are away, General Syndulla. _Mercy Kill_ has started to recall her fighters. Should we do the same?”

Cham covered the mouthpiece of the headset he was wearing and glanced in her direction, taking in the controlled chaos on the bridge. Two crewmen had been injured when one of the consoles had exploded; they were both sitting on the floor, being seen to by a medic. Mishaan was twisting around in her command chair, waiting for a response.

“Bring them in,” he ordered, turning back to the comm station. Mishaan knew how to do her job; she didn’t need him for this. “Prepare to jump as soon as they’re onboard.”

“You can’t leave Hera!” Xiaan hissed. “Uncle!”

_“I presume you want your daughter to keep breathing for the time being, Syndulla,”_ Agent Kallus said, as calmly as if they had been seated at a negotiating table instead of on opposite sides of an interstellar battlefield. _“What was it your niece was just offering her? To get in an escape pod and be guided in to your ship?”_

Cham glanced at Xiaan, who swallowed and nodded, her lips pressed into a thin line. It would have been a good idea, he thought. If Hera had done it.

_“I wanted your fleet, but I’ll settle for you,”_ Kallus said. _“Get in an escape pod. I’ll send TIE fighters to escort you in and you’ll be placed under arrest.”_

“Will I be shot immediately or just sent to one of the ISB’s black prisons?” Cham inquired sharply, ignoring Ojeda’s gasp. She grabbed at Xiaan’s hand, gasping a frantic protest in Basic.

_“What you’ll get,”_ Kallus said, _“is not having your daughter’s brains blown out.”_

Cham crossed his arms, hearing Hera let out a small sound that wasn’t quite a sob. He tried to picture her in his mind: the woman he had seen on Thyferra, in her crisp Imperial grays, with a blaster pointed at her head.

He covered the mouthpiece of the headset again, turning to look back at the bridge. The shields sparked across the viewport as the ship rocked under laserfire, a distant alarm starting to wail in another part of the ship. “Mishaan, how much time until our ‘fighters are onboard?”

Her gaze flickered towards him. “At least three minutes,” she said, distracted. “We’ve got fifteen out still, the Fenns have four. General, you have orders?”

If he could keep Kallus waiting until all the fleet jumped away, then – the man wouldn’t kill Hera. Cham was nearly certain of it. Not if the ISB could use her for leverage somehow.

“Are Alecto and Doriah still out there?”

Mishaan repeated the question to one of her watch-standers, who nodded and said, “Yes, General. Do you want to speak to them?”

“Not yet,” Cham said. He turned his back to the bridge before Mishaan could say anything else, releasing the mouthpiece on his headset and crossing his arms again. “Are you still there, Agent Kallus?”

_“And waiting, Syndulla. What’s your answer?”_

Xiaan and Ojeda were both staring at him with wide eyes. “Let Hera go,” Cham said.

_“I’m afraid that won’t be happening,”_ Kallus said. _“Despite her shortcomings, Agent Syndulla is an Imperial officer. The Empire does not turn over its people to terrorists. And really, Syndulla, I don’t see that you have any leverage here.”_

“If you want me,” Cham said, “then you’ll let my daughter go.”

Hera made a small, sharp sound, but her voice was barely more than a whisper as she said, _“If you knew my father at all, sir, you would know that he puts nothing above his cause, least of all his own family. He’s playing for time.”_

Cham clenched his hand into a fist, wondering if his daughter _wanted_ to die. She had to know better than anyone that the Empire didn’t bluff in matters like these.

_“Roberto Beneke is dead,”_ Kallus said as a medic ran past the comm station, her shirt already blood-spattered. A mouse droid followed her, screeching frantically. _“At your hand, Syndulla, if I’m not mistaken. The entire Nemesis program is being reevaluated, beginning with Agent Syndulla here. Her death would save the ISB time and money.”_

Cham glanced at Mishaan again; she held up one finger, swaying with the motion of the ship as it rocked under repeated laserfire. “ _Mercy Kill_ is preparing to jump to hyperspace,” she said. “We’re just waiting for five more fighters.”

“Four,” one of the watch-standers called. “We just lost Shadow Six.”

Cham couldn’t put a name to the call sign, but Xiaan whimpered softly in the back of her throat.

The _Forlorn Hope_ shook again under a barrage of laserfire, the shields flaring across the viewport. Cham put a hand out to brace himself against the nearest console and said, “Then you won’t mind losing her. Put Hera in an escape pod; my fighters will guide her in to the _Forlorn Hope_. Once she’s onboard _my_ ship, I’ll get in an escape pod and do as you say.”

“Uncle, you can’t,” Ojeda whispered harshly. “You don’t know what they do to Imperial prisoners –”

_“The Empire does not negotiate with terrorists,”_ Kallus said impassively. He must have done something, because Hera let out a sudden whimper. _“I’ll make allowances for the size of your ship, Syndulla. You have one minute to find an escape pod. If I don’t see one jettison from that frigate of yours by the time that count is up, I’ll blow your daughter’s brains out the way you did Agent Beneke’s.”_

_“If you pull that trigger, Agent Kallus, it will be the last thing you ever do.”_

Cham blinked, not recognizing the new voice.

_“Kanan,”_ Hera whispered. _“This isn’t the time.”_

“Captain, we’ve got a new ship coming out of the planetary belt –” one of the watch-standers said, sounding baffled. “A light freighter, a Corellian VCX-100. It’s turning towards the Imperials and going weapons hot. It’s not one of ours.”

_“Inquisitor, this is none of your concern,”_ Kallus said sharply.

“All starfighters onboard!” one of the other watch-standers called.

“Disengage and prepare to jump to hyperspace,” Mishaan ordered immediately.

“Wait!” Cham said, turning towards her. “Hera –”

_“Wait for_ what, _Syndulla?”_ Kallus said, at the same time that the Inquisitor said, _“If you pull that trigger, Agent, I swear I’ll send you and that ship straight to hell –”_

“We’re clear for the moment,” Mishaan said, raising her voice to be heard. “General, we’re ready to jump. We need to go now!”

“Not yet,” Cham said flatly, and turned his back to her.

“Why?” she snapped back; he glanced over his shoulder to see her rising from her command chair. “We’re going to lose this opening, we’ve got TIEs inbound and there’s a cruiser moving to block us off. Cham, we have to get out of here _now_. What are you waiting for?”

“My daughter!” Cham snapped. “Let her go, Kallus, and you can have me. We’ll go at the same time –”

He hadn’t heard Mishaan’s approach. She ripped the headset off him and said, “Are you mad, Syndulla? Make the jump to hyperspace!”

Cham caught her wrist as Xiaan let out a sharp cry, but it was too late; the stars streaked into lines in the viewport, and then into the blue nothing of hyperspace.

“What have you done?” he demanded.

Mishaan flung the headset aside, just barely missing Ojeda. “There are six thousand beings on this ship, General Syndulla, and another forty-three thousand in this fleet,” she snapped. “Unlike one of us here, I’m not willing to ransom their lives for the sake of one traitor, no matter whose daughter she is.”

“That is not your decision to make,” Cham snarled.

“And it’s not yours, either,” Mishaan said. “You are Syndulla. You are Ryloth! Your life is not your own to bargain with. That girl is a traitor to Ryloth and her species. She gave up whatever right she had to you when she swore her oaths to the Emperor and the sooner you remember that, General, the better off we’ll all be.” She pulled her hand free of Cham’s grasp and turned away, her bootheels clicking on the deck as she returned to the silent bridge. Except for the sobbing of one of the injured men, the entire bridge crew was silent, staring between their captain and their general.

“Mishaan!” Cham called after her, but she didn’t turn back.

Xiaan scrambled up suddenly, breaking the silence. “I – I’ve got to find Doriah,” she blurted out, then grabbed Ojeda’s wrist and pulled her out of her seat, hurrying towards the door.

“Mishaan,” Cham said again. He took a step after her, but she didn’t turn back, and after a moment, he shook his head and followed Xiaan out the door. He had to find Alecto.

*

Hera stumbled away from Agent Kallus as he released her, pressing a hand to her mouth. She barely managed to catch the comlink as he tossed it at her. “Call off your pet Inquisitor,” he said, turning away before she could respond.

Hera fumbled for the comlink. She felt numb, her hands clumsy and her head seemingly filled with fog, but she finally managed to get it near her mouth. “Kanan?”

_“Hera, are you all right?”_

“Agent Kallus, the freighter is still on a direct approach. Shall we fire?” asked Admiral Konstantine, eyeing Hera like a particularly unpleasant disturbance on his otherwise calm bridge.

She swallowed. “Kanan, break off now. I’m fine, but if you get my ship shot up –” She had to force the words out.

The _Ghost_ was close enough to the _Relentless_ that it set off the star destroyer’s proximity alarms as it shot over the bow. Hera caught her breath as its belly briefly filled the viewport, then it was gone, looping around the side of the star destroyer.

_“I’m coming to pick you up,”_ Kanan said, his voice tight with strain. _“I’ll meet you in the hangar.”_

Hera glanced at Agent Kallus for permission, but she might as well have not existed for all the attention he paid her, and right now all Hera wanted was to be away from him and this ship. “All right,” she said. “Thank you,” she added, biting her lip between her teeth. “Will – will you stay on the line?”

_“Yeah, of course,”_ he said immediately. _“What do you want me to say?”_

“I don’t – just don’t cut the connection,” Hera said. She turned away from the viewport, aware of the members of the bridge crew sneaking glances at her as she made her way as quickly as possible to the doors. Neither Agent Kallus nor Admiral Konstantine looked back at her.

She kept her back straight and her chin up all the way down to the hangar, even though she felt so fragile she might explode, her whole body tight with tension. Crew members and stormtroopers alike stood back when she passed them, eyeing both her green skin and her gray uniform with stares that Hera had been more than familiar with for the past ten years. She had been used to this once, back when she had still been at the Academy. Then she had gone into the field, and there had been Kanan, and everything had changed.

_“We’re here,”_ Kanan said, his voice gentle.

“I’m almost there,” Hera said, and swallowed. “It’s a big ship.”

_“Let me know if you need me to send out a search party. I’m sure Ezra would like the chance to explore.”_

“Then you would probably need to send out two search parties, love.” Hera took a breath and stepped through the doors into the hangar, where the TIE pilots were hanging back by their starfighters and warily eyeing the _Ghost_. The ramp was down, Kanan standing at the base of it with his lightsaber hilt in his hand and glaring around at all of them. When she came in, his gaze went immediately to her, brightening.

Hera put her shoulders back and started the long slow trek across the deck to him. She was passing the TIEs when she caught movement out of the corner of her eye, one TIE pilot elbowing another familiarly, and couldn’t help but look over.

He was a Twi’lek.

She stopped dead, staring.

He was a white-skinned Twi’lek male a few years younger than her, one of his lekku wrapped around his shoulders and revealing the black caste tattoos on it. _Fenn_ , Hera identified automatically, something she hadn’t even remembered learning; another curial clan like the Syndullas. Except he was here on an Imperial star destroyer, he was wearing a TIE pilot’s flight suit, with a helmet modified for his lekku tucked under his arm.

He met her gaze, his black eyes widening in surprise, and for a moment they stared at each other. Then his friend elbowed him again, saying something in a voice too low for Hera to make out, and she dragged her gaze away. She couldn’t help but look back at him as she hurried across the deck to the _Ghost_ and Kanan; he was still staring after her.

“Are you all right?” Kanan asked again as soon as she reached him, his voice pitched low with concern.

Hera could have wept with relief. She wanted to throw herself into his arms, but she was still in plain sight of everyone in the hangar, and all she let herself do was nod very slightly and walk up the ramp into the _Ghost_ ’s hold. Kanan shut the ramp behind them; as soon as it latched shut Hera stumbled towards him, half-falling into his arms.

She was crying before she was even consciously aware of it, her knees going out from under her and Kanan supporting her as they both slid down onto the floor of the hold, until Hera was kneeling between his spread legs and he was holding her close against him, her cheek pressed against the hard metal of his armor, her racking sobs filling the hold.

“It’s all right, it’s all right,” Kanan murmured, stroking her back. “Hera, you’re safe now, you’re here –”

No, that wasn’t it, she wanted to tell him, but she was crying too hard to get the words out. _My father_ – no. _Xiaan_ – he wouldn’t understand. _My commanding officer put a blaster to my head_ – that had been Kanan’s every day at the Crucible, from the little she knew. Hera couldn’t seem to fit any of it into words, just curled in his arms and wept. She had done everything right. She had done everything Agent Beneke had ever asked of her, and she had still – she had still –

Even in the Empire, this wasn’t supposed to happen.

_What if he wasn’t lying this time? What if he was telling the truth?_ But Cham wouldn’t, he would never – not when it was Ryloth at stake, not his precious cause. And it hadn’t happened, anyway, all he had been doing had been playing for time until his fleet could jump to safety. _But what if this time it was real?_

Not her father. He would never.

“Kanan? Hera?”

She dragged her head up to see Sabine leaning down out of the hatch that led to the cockpit. She cleared her throat and said, “The _Relentless_ is preparing to jump to hyperspace. Do we want to stick around for that or head back to Lothal on our own?” She paused. “We _are_ going back to Lothal?”

Hera nodded a little, trying to push herself upright. Kanan put a hand under her elbow and supported her as he stood, saying, “Let’s go back on our own. We can take the long way.”

Sabine nodded. “Okay. I’ll tell Zeb.” She started back up the ladder, then hesitated, “Are you all right, Hera?”

Hera didn’t trust herself to speak, so she just nodded.

“Okay,” Sabine said again, her voice gentle. “We’re here for you, Hera. We all are. We’re a family. Whatever you need.”

Hera dipped her chin again, curving her body against Kanan’s as he wrapped his arms around her. Sabine vanished back up into the cockpit, and a moment later she felt the _Ghost_ ’s enjoy hum to life, coming off standby as the ship lifted away from the deck.

“Did you hear all of that?” she asked Kanan. Her voice was trembling and worse, her accent was coming through, almost as strong as her father’s had been.

“Yeah.”

Hera bit her lip, feeling tears well up again. “I don’t know why this is happening to me,” she told him. “Why is this happening to me, Kanan?”

“Hera, it’s not your fault,” Kanan said. “You can’t control anyone else’s actions.”

“But why is it _happening_?” Hera said. She scrubbed a hand beneath her eyes, trying to wipe away the tears. “It’s been _ten years_ , Kanan. I haven’t heard anything from my family in _ten years_ , why is this happening now? What did I do to deserve this? Why didn’t this happen ten years ago when I wanted them?”

Kanan just shook his head. He pressed a kiss to her forehead, just below the line of her cap, and said quietly, “Why does anything ever happen, Hera? There’s no rhyme or reason to the universe. It’s just the way it works.”

“Well, it shouldn’t!” Hera said. She had to turn away from him, covering her face with her hands and bending over to catch her breath, trying to get her sobs under control before she turned back. “Ten years ago I would have given anything to hear that, to hear my father – why is it happening now, Kanan? Why didn’t it happen when it still mattered?”

He put his hand on her arm, his touch light. “It matters, Hera. You know it still matters.”

“It shouldn’t!” Hera said. “He killed –” She covered her mouth with her hand, saying through her fingers. “He killed Agent Beneke. He’s a terrorist, a rebel, he sent me away, he never – it shouldn’t matter! I’m an Imperial officer, Kanan!”

“He’s your father,” Kanan said. “He’s your blood.”

“You don’t know anything about that!”

He flinched, but all he said was, “You’re right, I don’t. My family was the Order and they’ve been dead more than half my life. I never had a chance of getting them back.”

“I don’t want them back,” Hera said miserably. “I just want to do my duty, Kanan. Why won’t they just let me do my duty?”

“You know the Empire doesn’t work like that, Hera.”

“It’s supposed to. Agent Beneke always said –” She dragged in her breath. “He put a blaster to my head, Kanan. He put – I’m an _Imperial officer_ , and he – like I was – I’m an officer, and he treated me like I was a prisoner, like I was –” She pressed her hands to her mouth, gasping for air. “I’ve been an officer for ten years and he put a blaster to my head like none of it mattered, in front of everyone on the bridge. Like I was just another –”

Kanan caught her shoulders, his hands gentle, and Hera crumpled against him.

Ten years, and all of it thrown away in a moment. No matter what she did, she would never be able to erase the memory of this; it would be all over the Empire within days, because stormtroopers gossiped. Naval officers gossiped. Kallus would spread it because that was who he was. A spotless record, and all anyone would ever remember of her was that another agent had put a blaster to her head on the bridge of a star destroyer in front of everyone, because of who her _father_ was.

“Do you want to leave?” Kanan asked her, his voice very quiet. “We can go now – drop out of hyperspace, adjust our course, just go. Anywhere you want.”

Hera raised her gaze to him. It was only the second time he had ever asked her that; the first time had been six years ago, after he had found out that she was an Imperial officer. She wished – after he had come back from the Crucible, she had wished she had said yes then. But she couldn’t tell him that. Not after what he had gone through.

“I can’t,” she whispered. “I’m still an Imperial officer, Kanan. I’m not going to prove Agent Kallus right. I’m not going to give him that satisfaction. I can still do my job.”

“Okay,” Kanan said. He kissed her forehead again. “Offer’s always open, Hera. You know no one on this ship will complain.”

She made herself huff out laughter. “Don’t let Agent Kallus hear you say that. He’ll have you up on charges before you finish the sentence.”

“He’d have to call Mustafar for that,” Kanan said. “And I haven’t yet met an ISB agent who’ll call up the Inquisition willingly.” He put a hand beneath her chin and tipped her face up to kiss her lightly.

Hera smiled a little, still tearful, and hugged him. “What were you going to do, ram the _Relentless_?”

He shrugged. “It seemed like a good idea at the time.”

“You’re lucky you didn’t get a scratch on my ship,” Hera said. She scrubbed a hand over her face, wiping her tears away on the sleeve of her jacket. “This doesn’t matter. I’m still an Imperial officer, no matter what that bastard thinks. I can do my duty.”


	16. Shatterpoint

Xiaan burst into the hangar bay to find it swarming with people and droids, all of them seemingly running in opposite directions. She grabbed Ojeda’s wrist to pull her out of the way as a pair of medics dashed past with a Twi’lek woman in a torn and bloodied pilot’s uniform on a repulsor-powered stretcher, her face and lekku so badly burned that Xiaan couldn’t see the color of her skin. She was moaning and twitching, one foot kicking feebly at the base of the stretcher before they vanished out into the corridor.

Somewhere else in the hangar bay Xiaan could hear screaming, though the sound was barely audible over the other sounds in the hangar – pilots and deck crew, medics, droids, everyone speaking at once and trying to get the wounded out and the starfighters in some semblance of order. Xiaan knew from previous battles that they must have all made combat landings, which tended to be rough on both the starfighters and the hangar bay, which had dents in the walls, floor, and ceiling as big as she was from ships hitting them at high speed.

Ojeda was still staring after the wounded pilot, her eyes huge and her lekku slack with shock. Xiaan squeezed her hand and said, “Come on, we have to find Doriah,” tugging her away from the wall and into the scrum.

Under most circumstances people on the _Forlorn Hope_ would have recognized her and cleared a path, but in the aftermath of the battle Xiaan had to fight her way through the crowd, towing Ojeda after her as she looked frantically around for a face she recognized.

_Doriah’s all right. Doriah has to be all right._ She hadn’t been listening to any of the starfighter channels, but she was certain someone would have told her if he had been injured. Doriah had to be all right; she couldn’t bear it if anything had happened to him, not after Hera –

_Hera has to be all right too._

Xiaan clung furiously to the thought as she shoved her way past a pair of deck crewmen, a pilot she didn’t know, and an astromech, ducking under the wing of an ARC-170. Ojeda followed, yelping as she miscalculated and hit her head; Xiaan glanced back to make sure that she was all right and then forged on.

_He has to be all right. He_ has _to be_ –

She came around the scorched side of a V-19 Torrent whose chassis was so badly scorched that the paint had started to melt off and saw him.

He was standing by the side of his Headhunter, helmet tucked under his arm as he spoke to Numa and Sthenno, another pilot in his squadron. Xiaan released her grip on Ojeda’s hand and ran to him, Doriah turning at the sound of her footsteps. He tossed his helmet aside in time to catch her, his hands familiar on her waist as he spun her around.

Xiaan flung her arms around his neck and buried her face in his shoulder, breathing hard and concentrating on the sound of his heartbeat beneath her cheek. He dropped a kiss to the top of her lekku and said, “I’m all right, Xi – what’s wrong? Are you okay?”

It took everything she had to pull away from him, to straighten up, though Doriah kept his arm around her waist. He leaned over to kiss Ojeda on the cheek as she approached, eyeing the two strangers warily.

“This is my cousin Ojeda,” he said to Numa and Sthenno.

“Xiaan’s cousin,” Ojeda corrected, carefully precise; Xiaan lifted her head to see Doriah roll his eyes.

“Xiaan’s cousin,” he repeated, though both Numa and Sthenno seemed surprised by the apparent non-sequitur; the usual gradations of caste and familial relationships hadn’t mattered on the _Hope_ for years. Doriah looked down again as Xiaan tugged on his sleeve, his expression going concerned and his grip tightening on her waist. “What is it?”

“It’s Hera,” Xiaan said, making him flinch. “She was here. She was with the Imperial fleet, Doriah. Hera was _here_.”

*

Hera still felt numb as she followed Kanan up the ladder to the _Ghost_ ’s main level. Zeb, Sabine, and Ezra had had the consideration to retreat from the cockpit, where they might have overheard Hera and Kanan’s conversation, but Chopper was still there. He grumbled a concerned greeting at them, waving an extended arm and beeping a shrill threat directed at Agent Kallus. Hera took that to mean he had been in the cockpit with Kanan the whole time.

She looked a question at Kanan and he said quietly, “It wasn’t transmitting to the rest of the ship, but Ezra and Sabine were in the cockpit with me and Zeb was down in the gunner’s bubble.”

Hera shut her eyes, clenching her jaw so hard it hurt. “So they heard everything.”

“Yeah. I’m sorry. I tried to send them out when your cousin came on, but –”

“It’s not your fault,” Hera said dully. She leaned back against the pilot’s chair and scrubbed a hand over her eyes, but they were dry now, the skin tender and swollen. She didn’t think she had any tears left, not anymore.

Kanan touched her cheek gently, his fingers light and familiar. “You don’t have to see them if you don’t want to.”

“I can face my own crew, Kanan,” Hera said tiredly. If she couldn’t do that, then there was no way that she would be able to walk into the Imperial Complex on Lothal, let alone back into the ISB.

“They’ll wait, if you need time.”

“I know.” She reached up and caught at his hand, squeezing his fingers between hers before releasing him, then took a deep breath and walked towards the doors.

She found the others in the lounge, all of them staring silently and awkwardly at each other. As the doors slid open they all looked up in unison, black, blue-and-orange, and purple heads popping up like something from a HoloNet comedy show.

_All right_ , Hera thought as they stared at her, _maybe I should have followed Kanan’s advice and taken some more time._

It was Zeb who spoke first, apparently deciding to take his responsibility as the oldest of the bunch seriously. “Hera,” he said, “we didn’t know –”

Hera’s jaw tightened until it took all she had to work it loose to reply. “No one knew,” she said. “It’s not exactly public knowledge that Cham Syndulla is my father.”

“So,” Sabine said haltingly, “we’re leaving, aren’t we? After what Agent Kallus did –”

Hera blinked at her. “We’re still Imperial officers, Sabine. We swore oaths to the Emperor. This doesn’t change anything.”

“Are you serious?” Sabine said, rising to her feet. “He put a blaster to your head, Hera! And that’s not even starting on what he did to Zeb –”

“Agent Kallus is one man, not the entire Empire!” Hera said. “The oaths we swore still stand just because he’s –”

Kanan said something rude under his breath, and Hera swung around to glare at him. “You’re not helping!”

“So what?” Sabine demanded. “We’re just going to stick around and pretend it didn’t happen? You know no one else in the service is going to. By this time tomorrow everyone from Tatooine to Coruscant is going to have heard about it. And how can you take orders from someone who would do that –”

Hera slapped her hand down on the holotable. “I’m an officer! I can do my duty, no matter who my father is or what Agent Kallus thinks.”

“Sabine’s right, Hera,” Zeb said. He reached up to fold his hand over Sabine’s shoulder, though Hera couldn’t tell whether he was trying to hold her back or reassure her. “Look, we have a ship and a crew. We can make it anywhere. If Kallus will do that to you, then no one else in the Bureau’s going to raise a hand for you – and if they won’t do it for you, they won’t do it for any of the rest of us, either. Maybe Kanan’s all right –” He nodded in his direction. “No one in their right mind is going to mess with the Inquisition. But you’re the only one of us who’s a real officer. No offense, Sabine.”

“None taken,” Sabine said.

Ezra, who had been looking back and forth between them, said, “Wait, you’re not –”

“I’m a probationary agent, it’s complicated,” Sabine said without looking at him. “Hera, he put a blaster to your head and accused you of treason in front of the entire _Relentless_ bridge crew! You _know_ how the ISB works, how the Empire works. He can say anything he wants and the Bureau will listen. That’s how it works. That’s how it worked back on Mandalore, that’s how it works on Naboo, and that’s definitely how it’s going to work here. That’s how it always works.”

Hera clenched her hands into fists at her sides, aware of Kanan’s comforting presence at her back. “What do you expect me to do about it, Sabine? I’m an officer. I swore oaths to the Empire. No matter what Agent Kallus says, I have to believe that my record will speak for itself. And it will –”

Sabine shook her head, staring at her. “It’s not just about you anymore, Hera. You know it’s not just you and Kanan and Chop. Maybe you don’t care about what the ISB does to you, but Zeb and I are only on this ship because the Empire trusted _you_ , because the Bureau trusted _you_ , because Agent Beneke believed in _you_. If they take that away – I was going to end up in front of a firing squad back on Mandalore. The Empire wiped out Zeb’s _entire species_. They’re going to remember that if they decide you’re a loose cannon. Who knows what they’re going to do to the kid,” she added as an afterthought, making Ezra look alarmed.

“Sabine, nothing’s going to happen,” Hera insisted, trying to keep her voice calm. “I’m going to submit my report to Naboo as soon as we come out of hyperspace. Despite my – my background, my record is spotless. The Bureau has nothing to complain about in regards to my performance. Everything’s going to be fine.”

Zeb scowled. “Except for Kanan charging a star destroyer, you mean?”

“He’s an Inquisitor, what’s going to happen to him?” Sabine snapped. “He could get away with murder if he wanted.”

Kanan shrugged.

“Oh, very helpful, dear,” Hera said to him. She turned her attention back to Sabine and added, “Nothing’s going to happen. Trust me, all right? You trusted me enough to come here in the first place. You have to keep trusting me. It will all be sorted out.” She took a deep breath. “And I’m going to forget what you said to me. No one on this ship is deserting our duty.”

Sabine shook her head, her mouth slightly open. “I can’t believe you,” she said. “I can’t believe you’re just going to pretend that this never happened. You think that this isn’t just going to keep getting worse and worse? That it’s going to end with this?”

“Yes,” Hera said, her hands fisted at her sides. “I’ve been in the Imperial service a lot longer than you have, Sabine. I know how the Empire works. This is just one of their games. Something else will happen and it will be forgotten in a few weeks. I didn’t do anything wrong.”

Sabine shook her head again. “And people wonder why I tried to leave the Academy in the first place,” she spat, then shoved past Hera and stormed out of the lounge.

Hera rubbed a hand over her face, then made herself look up at Zeb and Ezra. “Are you going to start with me too?”

“I think she pretty much covered it,” Zeb said, standing up. He stopped on his way out of the lounge to put his hand on Hera’s shoulder, making her look up at him. “Sabine’s right, Hera. We had a good run, but if Agent Kallus has his way, then it’s going to end right now. You know that.”

Hera reached up to cover his hand with hers, shaking her head. “You have to believe in the Empire, Zeb. We do our jobs. We do our duty. We’ve never not completed a mission. The Bureau’s not going to forget that just because Agent Kallus doesn’t like me.”

“That’s not how the empire works, Hera,” Zeb said. “My people knew that better than anything.” He squeezed her shoulder, then released her and followed Sabine out into the corridor.

“Uh,” Ezra said, “I’m just going to – go.” He slid out of his seat, then dashed past them after Zeb and Sabine.

Hera bit her lip after the door closed after him, turning towards Kanan and bracing herself for whatever he had to say. “Well?”

“I’ve already said what I had to say,” Kanan said. He put his hands on her shoulders, his touch gentle. “Whatever you want to do, I’ll support you.”

“Do you think they’re wrong?”

He bit his lip. “I don’t think it’s going to be as simple as you want it to be,” he said finally.

“That’s not an answer.”

“It’s your choice,” Kanan said. He pressed a gentle kiss to your forehead. “If I ever find Agent Kallus in a dark alley, though –”

Hera snorted softly, elbowing him. “That’s treason, dear.”

“Didn’t you hear?” Kanan said with a shadow of a grin. “I’m an Inquisitor. I could get away with murder if I wanted.”

*

The absences in the Synedrion seemed to echo far more than they should have, given that there were fewer than half a dozen beings absent. Still, the other captains and clan leaders in the fleet had left spaces for those that should have been there, and Cham supplied names to the empty spaces as he looked around the holoconference room. They had lost two ships in the battle, one of which had been a Syndulla ship and the other associated with the Amersus, a smaller patrician clan. The Amersu ships were led by the younger brother of the current clan head, who had chosen to remain back on Ryloth with the rest of the clan; Keto Amersu had been on the destroyed ship, but had been lucky enough to have his escape pod picked up by the _Forlorn Hope_ before they had jumped away. His ship’s captain hadn’t been so lucky, and the Syndulla ship had been destroyed with all hands. The captain of another ship had been too badly injured to join the conference, while another ship had had all its communications knocked out; its captain had given her proxy to Cham rather than shuttle over for the meeting.

He could feel the tension in the room as Mishaan finally joined them, the door sliding shut behind her with a decisive click. She took a seat on the other side of Keto Amersu, not looking at Cham as she did so; Sinthya flicked a holographic eyebrow at Cham at this, but he didn’t respond.

The head of the Ertay clan broke the silence, “How did this happen, Syndulla?” she demanded.

“The Empire got lucky,” Cham said. “We’ve lingered in this system longer than usual; perhaps an Imperial probe droid found us, perhaps –”

“What about that ship that’s been coming and going lately?” Zantab Ertay demanded. “Maybe they reported us to the Empire. Or reported _you_ –”

“Impossible,” Cham said. “My contact has no love for the Empire; I trust them absolutely.”

“Perhaps _you_ do, but whoever this person is, they’re a stranger to the rest of us,” Zantab’s husband – the captain of the _Cloud Dancer_ , the Ertay flagship – said. He and his wife shared a look. “The rumor is that you’ve been absent from the fleet more often lately, Syndulla –”

“Are you blaming this attack on Syndulla?” Keto Amersu demanded, leaning forward. He flattened a dark purple hand on the table, glaring around at them. “Syndulla stood and defended this fleet so that we could escape! To excuse him of being complicit is treason –”

“Calm yourself, Amersu, no one is saying that,” said Sienn Tarkona, raising her hands. “Everyone in this fleet knows that if we were betrayed, it would not be by Syndulla.”

“It is easy to speak of betrayal, but there is no proof of it,” said Pol Kru in his stilted Highlands Twi’leki; he and his two ships were all that remained of his clan, which had been otherwise wiped out in its entirety by the Empire. When Cham looked at him, he inclined his head solemnly; he was a craggy orange-red nearly the same color as the mountains his clan had held back on Ryloth, his lekku so closely covered with dark red tattoos that they looked almost black.

“Didn’t you bring someone back from your last little outing, Syndulla?” Secchun Fenn said, making most of the table look around at her. Her expression betrayed nothing except calm concern, a faint line etched between her brows; Cham couldn’t tell if it was genuine emotion or an act.

“I don’t see what business that is of yours or this meeting’s,” Sinthya snapped.

Secchun ignored her, her gaze still fixed on Cham. “Has Ojeda Syndulla been watched the entire time she’s been on the _Hope_?”

There was a murmur around the table, captains and clan leaders looking around each other and then at Cham. He clenched his one fist on top of his knee, out of sight of the others, and said evenly, “She has.”

No one needed to know that that wasn’t quite true, at least not now. That would only lead to questions that weren’t anyone else’s business as far as Cham was concerned, chief of which was how Secchun had known about Ojeda in the first place. She hadn’t yet been with the fleet for the twenty-four hours of a standard day; she had gone straight from the hangar to the medbay to Doriah and Xiaan’s cabin.

_Probably_ , Cham thought grimly, _the same person who told her about Hera._ He still didn’t know who that had been; after Doriah’s outburst the other day it could have been anyone on the _Forlorn Hope_ , since gossip spread through the fleet at only a little more slowly than the speed of sound. Secchun, of course, had refused to reveal her source.

Mishaan leaned forward slightly. As Cham turned to frown at her, she said without looking at him, “Ojeda Syndulla has been put under arrest while we investigate the events leading up to the attack.”

“You _what_?” Cham demanded.

Mishaan’s cheeks flushed purple under the scrutiny. “Under the circumstances it seemed like the prudent thing to do,” she said, still without turning towards him. “She hasn’t been on the _Hope_ for long. If she’s innocent, then that should be easy to determine.”

“That was not your decision to make,” Cham said, trying to keep his voice even. They had an audience, after all, and he would not allow himself to show weakness in front of the other members of the Synedrion.

“The security of this ship is my responsibility, Syndulla,” Mishaan said. “The security of the fleet is yours.”

“We’ll discuss this later,” Cham said coolly. Keto Amersu, glancing back and forth between them, looked uneasy at being caught in the middle; when Cham sat back and flicked a glance at Sinthya, he saw that she had both her hands fisted, her right hand resting on her blaster grip – not that it would have done any good, since she was currently on the _Razor’s Edge_ just off the _Hope_ ’s port bow, rather than in the room with them.

“And if the girl is guilty?” Secchun asked. “You know the punishment for treason –”

“We’ll deal with that if it comes,” Cham said, scowling at her. He waited for a beat, but no one else from the Synedrion seemed inclined to speak, however many silent glances were being shared between them. It was always possible that some of them were speaking to each other on private channels, undetectable by the holoconferencing software.

When no one spoke, he said, “Damage from the battle is still being assessed. All of the _Coba_ ’s escape pods have been picked up, but the _Sand Winder_ was destroyed with all hands. _Forlorn Hope_ , _Mercy Kill_ , _Morning Star_ , _Zisudra_ , and _Lessu Star_ are so far all confirmed as having casualties.”

“Do we strike back?” asked one of the Syndulla captains, a young fifth-rank patrician with burnt orange skin and earnest eyes. “Do we take our revenge?”

“Against who?” Sinthya asked before Cham could reply.

“The Empire!” Grae Syndulla said, looking eagerly between them. “They killed our people; we can’t just let that go.”

Cham had no idea how Grae – who was a second cousin a generation or two removed – could think of that at the moment, though he supposed he wasn’t as surprised as he could have been. That side of the family had always been hot-headed. “We’ll hold that thought for now,” he said. “Let’s get the fleet sorted out before we begin thinking of vengeance.”

Grae sat back with a nod of acknowledgment, looking disappointed. He wasn’t, Cham noted, the only one.

Cham looked around at the other members of the Synedrion. “We’ll assess our damage and then meet again,” he said. “As of now we know nothing about how the Empire was able to find us and I’ll thank you all not to jump to conclusions. Are there any immediate concerns?”

When there was no response, Cham dismissed the Synedrion. One by one the members began to blink out of sight; as they did so, Cham switched to a private channel and said, “Secchun, stay for a moment, if you would.”

Mishaan and Keto, who were both in the room with him and couldn’t help hearing, both looked at him in surprise. “I’ll be with you later,” Cham told them. “And Mishaan – we will speak about this.”

Her mouth tightened, but she jerked her head in something like a nod before turning and leaving the room. Keto followed her, frowning.

Sinthya leaned over and said, “You’re going to handle this?”

“It will be taken care of,” Cham told her.

“I’ll comm Alecto and see if she knows,” Sinthya said, then blinked out of sight, leaving him alone in the room with Secchun Fenn’s holographic presence.

“What is it, Syndulla?” she said. “Is this about the battle?”

“No,” Cham said. “It’s not about the battle. But I didn’t think it should wait until after the clean-up – parent to parent.”

Secchun went still. “Don’t toy with me, Syndulla,” she said, her voice soft. “I’ll destroy you if this is your idea of a joke.”

“You of all people should know I never joke,” Cham said. He took a deep breath, adding, “Whatever we say here is under stone, Secchun. I can’t stop you from doing what you will with what I’m about to say, but I think when I’m done you’ll agree.”

She frowned, her dark brows drawing together, then nodded slowly. “Say your piece, Syndulla.”

“Alecto and I didn’t go to Naboo to get Ojeda,” Cham said. “That was a lucky coincidence. What we went for was to break into the ISB headquarters there to copy their files.”

Secchun blinked. “Are you mad, Syndulla? The ISB –”

He held up his hand to stop her. “I think you know the reason why we took that risk.”

Her mouth went tight. After a moment she nodded. “Go on.”

“We were looking for what happened to the colony and to the people arrested on Ryloth as well as what happened to my family and my clan,” Cham said.

Secchun raised her head, her eyes widening in realization. “Gatan –”

“He’s dead.” Cham said the words as gently as possible, watching the shiver run through Secchun as she closed her eyes, her mouth twisting in grief. “Xiaan has been going through the files ever since we got them; she found the report on what happened to your family on Ryloth. Your husband was sent to the spice mines on Kessel and died there five years ago. Reading between the lines of the file on him, he was killed in a fight with another prisoner.”

“Gatan was never a fighter,” Secchun said, her eyes still closed. “That was always me. He just wanted to write his damn poetry.” She looked up at him suddenly, her eyes widening. “You said parent to parent. My son –”

“The Empire did to Thamir what they did to Hera,” Cham said. Xiaan was like him; she worked when she was upset, and she had been digging through the ISB files without a break since the battle, presumably to keep from thinking about what had nearly happened to Hera. She had almost broken down his door when she had finally found something related to Ryloth.

Secchun slammed her hand down on the table in the _Mercy Kill_ ’s conference room, the holoconferencing software helpfully replicating the sound for Cham. “My son would not betray Ryloth!”

_And my daughter would?_ Cham thought, but he didn’t say it; that argument would get them nowhere, and it wasn’t one he wanted to have at the moment. “What was done to our children was not done willingly –” he began.

“You are _lying_ ,” Secchun spat. “This is a ploy to keep me from telling the rest of the Synedrion about your Hera, one of your tricks.”

In response, Cham slid the datachip he had been palming into the table’s reader, knowing that it would transmit to Secchun on the _Mercy Kill_.

The hologram that appeared between them was of a young Twi’lek male in his early twenties, white-skinned and with black caste markings on his lekku. He was wearing the gray service uniform of the Imperial Starfighter Corps, with his pilot’s wings pinned to his chest over his rank insignia and his squadron badge on his left shoulder.

Secchun dragged in a breath that scraped at the air between them, starting to reach out for the hologram before she stopped herself. “That’s not possible,” she said, the words forced out. “That is not possible.”

Cham touched a control, and a second hologram sprang up alongside the first – this one of Thamir Fenn in his black TIE pilot’s flight suit, his helmet tucked under his arm. Secchun made a sound almost of physical pain, closing her hands into fists and pressing them against her stomach, breathing hard in sharp gasps.

“He’s a lieutenant in the Starfighter Corps,” Cham said when she didn’t speak. “He graduated from the Imperial Academy on Christophsis three years ago; his current assignment is on the star destroyer _Relentless_. His handler is an ISB agent named Emelie Sherin.”

“Why are you telling me this?” Secchun said through her teeth, her gaze fixed on her son. “What do you want, Syndulla?”

“Nothing,” Cham said. “When it was my daughter, someone told me. I know what it is like to live not knowing the fate of your child – to live not even knowing whether they are alive or dead.”

Secchun finally raised her gaze to him. “You know what people will say if this gets out.”

“As well as you do,” Cham said, “and for the same reason.” He looked at her for a long moment before adding, “We’re even now, Secchun.”

Her mouth tightened before her eyelids dipped briefly in acknowledgment. “I want that file. Both of them. The one on my husband and the one on my son.”

“I’m not comfortable transmitting that information across the fleet net,” Cham said. “You’ll have to come and get them in person.”

Secchun nodded slowly. “Fair enough, Syndulla. I’ve got damage on the _Kill_ to deal with; I can’t leave immediately without raising questions I’d rather not answer. But I’ll come.” She hesitated before adding, “Thank you.”

“Parent to parent,” Cham said. “Our children should not be bargaining chips. Not in this.”

“Point taken.” She flinched as Cham disconnected the datachip from the table’s reader, though he knew she had undoubtedly already copied the holograms to her own drive back on her ship. “This remains under stone, Cham.”

“Under stone,” Cham replied. He sat back in his chair as Secchun ended the transmission, running a hand over his chin. _Under stone_ meant that whatever was spoken of would never be repeated; it was tradition that Cham knew Secchun would rather die than break.

Eventually he pushed himself out of his chair, putting the datachip back in his pocket. Mishaan was nowhere in sight when he emerged, but Lysha Syndulla, commander of the ship’s marines, was there, her hands clasped behind her back. She straightened up when she saw him.

“General.”

“Lysha,” Cham said. “What is it?”

“I thought that you’d like to know that Ojeda Syndulla has been released from custody. There were no unauthorized transmissions made from this ship before the battle began.” She frowned for an instant. “Captain Secura has also been informed.”

“Did Captain Secura order Ojeda’s release?” Cham asked.

“No,” Lysha said. “I made that decision on my own after I reviewed the evidence. It was not difficult to determine,” she added dryly.

“Thank you,” Cham said slowly.

Lysha nodded and left at Cham’s gesture of dismissal, leaving him alone in the corridor. He watched her go, pressing his teeth against the inside of his lip as he thought. At last he shook his head and turned in the direction opposite that which Lysha had taken, wondering what in blazes he was supposed to do about this.

*

Sabine hesitated outside the door to Hera’s cabin, her fist raised to knock. She couldn’t hear anything from inside; at least she knew that Kanan wasn’t in there with Hera, since she had just seen him in the galley with Ezra. Barging in on the two of them unannounced was a mistake she had only made once.

She rapped on the door; Hera called absently from inside, “It’s open.”

Sabine touched the control panel and stepped inside as the doors slid open. Hera was sitting cross-legged on her bunk, typing something on a datapad – the report she had been talking about earlier, probably. She let it rest on her knees as Sabine came in, her jaw going tight in anticipation.

Sabine waited for the door to close behind her before she said, “I thought I should apologize.”

“For?”

“For what I said earlier. It was out of line and that was the wrong time to say it.”

Hera eyed her. “That’s not much of an apology.”

Sabine crossed her arms over her chest and leaned against the doorframe. “Well, I don’t actually think I’m wrong.”

“Right,” Hera said. She sighed. “Sabine…”

“Hera –” Sabine grimaced. “I know you’ve been in the service a long time, probably since before my parents left me.”

“I’m not _that_ old,” Hera said wryly.

Sabine waved that aside. “You know I’ve never asked how you ended up in the service – how a Twi’lek ended up somewhere like the ISB.”

Hera’s brows narrowed suspiciously. “No, you haven’t. I’ve always appreciated that.”

“Well, I’m not going to ask now,” Sabine said. “That’s for you to tell me. Or not. It’s your choice. But you never asked why I wanted to leave the Academy on Mandalore, either. Why I did leave the Academy.”

“I read your file,” Hera said, frowning a little. “And the report on your bombing.”

“Yeah, and I’d love to know how you convinced the ISB that I was a ‘worthwhile investment’ –” Sabine punctuated this with hooked air-quotes, “– after that, but I figured that after Zeb your boss was just glad you’d picked up someone human for a change.”

“I’m sure that wasn’t a factor,” Hera said. “Kanan’s human, and Agent Beneke hates him far more than he does you.” She blinked. “Hated.”

Sabine shrugged. She had only met Agent Beneke once in the year she had been with the _Ghost_ , right after the team had finished up their mission on Mandalore and Hera had whisked them all back to Naboo to get everything squared away with Sabine’s recruitment. Nothing about the man had stood out to her; mostly Sabine remembered being extremely disconcerted by how Hera, who had been brash and forthright to the Imperial authorities on Mandalore, suddenly became quiet and obedient around him. As far as she was concerned, one less ISB agent in the galaxy was a good thing.

She said slowly, “I always appreciated that you never asked what happened that was so bad that I did what I did. Most people would have, but you and Kanan and Zeb…you never did.”

“Everyone on this ship has a past,” Hera said. “Everybody here was someone else before. It doesn’t matter what you did or what happened to you, just what you can do and who you want to be.”

She frowned for a moment in thought, but it didn’t seem to be directed at Sabine. After a moment she laid the datapad resting across her knees aside and leaned forward. “Sabine, you’ve never been afraid to speak your mind, and normally I appreciate that. I understand that you had experiences at the Imperial Academy on Mandalore that made you doubt the Empire; if you hadn’t, then you’d still be there.”

Sabine winced at the thought. “I’d rather have had the firing squad.”

“It’s easy to say that,” Hera said. “It’s not as easy to follow through. Believe me, I know.” She licked her lips, her gaze going distant. After a moment she looked back at Sabine. “I have to believe in the Empire, Sabine. I have to believe that the system works, because there are billions of beings out there who depend on it. If I – if we – lose faith in the Empire – we, the ones who swore oaths to defend it – then how is anyone else supposed to keep that faith?”

Sabine bit her lip. “Faith’s nice and all, Hera, but you know as well as I do that the Empire doesn’t really work like that. Neither of us would be here if it worked as ordered.”

“I’m not going to desert just because of what Agent Kallus did,” Hera said simply. “I meant my oath when I took it, Sabine. I’m not going to break it.”

“You know, sometimes you do sound like you were brainwashed,” Sabine said. 

Hera gave her a sharp look, and Sabine said quickly, “Sorry, that was…I just –” She bit her lip again. “Sometimes I’m not sure that you remember that there are other people’s lives at stake besides yours. And I don’t understand why you’re here, especially after what Agent Kallus said today.”

She turned to go, her hand already on the control panel before Hera said slowly, “Do you know what happened on Ryloth ten years ago?”

Sabine turned back to her. “There was some kind of uprising, wasn’t there? They don’t teach it in the Academy – not the details, anyway. Just the aftermath.”

Hera clasped her hands on top of her knees, not looking at Sabine. “Emperor Palpatine and Darth Vader went to visit Ryloth, which should have been a great honor – worlds like Ryloth don’t usually garner visits of that rank. Somehow the native resistance found out about it, and they were able to destroy the Emperor’s star destroyer as it came out of hyperspace. The Emperor and Lord Vader managed to escape, but they crashed on Ryloth’s surface. The rebels hunted them across the planet, before they were finally found by the local Imperial command. It was a huge scandal; there were traitors in the Imperial government there had been working with the rebels.”

“I remember learning about that,” Sabine said slowly. “There were mass executions in the Imperial ranks. Something like ninety percent of the Imperials stationed on Ryloth were either killed or transferred to other stations?”

Hera nodded. “That was the Imperials. The rebels…you have to understand something about Ryloth. It’s mostly a very rocky, barren world – not as bad as Tatooine or Geonosis, but it’s a hard world to live on if you’re used to somewhere like Naboo or Lothal. It’s very rocky, very mountainous, with large tracts of deserts covering most of the planet. Until very recently, most Twi’leks lived belowground and there are still millions of miles of cave systems that have never been mapped, least of all by the Empire. It’s why the rebels on Ryloth were able to survive so long. The Empire just couldn’t find them.

“We – they – knew who was behind the attack on the Empire, of course. Ryloth was occupied by the Separatists during the Clone Wars; the fight against the Separatists just turned into the fight against the Empire. The leaders of the resistance knew that their identities weren’t secret, that their families and friends would be in danger. So they sent them away to a Twi’lek colony that had been founded just after the Clone Wars on a world called Zardossa Stix. It’s a moon in the Outer Rim…” Hera’s voice trailed off. “It wasn’t widely known, but the Empire found out somehow.

“We couldn’t find the resistance, but we could find their families. The Empire wiped out the entire colony, almost ten thousand beings. I think only a few hundred were killed, either in the attack or executed immediately afterwards, but everyone else was sold into slavery or sent to prison or labor camps. Especially Cham Syndulla’s family.”

“How old were you?” Sabine asked, making her voice soft, seeing that Hera’s gaze was elsewhere – that she wasn’t seeing the familiar gray walls of her cabin, but something else. The colony back on Zardossa Stix? A prison cell?

Sabine had seen Imperial prisons before. They weren’t a place she wanted to be.

“Fourteen,” Hera said. “About Ezra’s age. I’m not sure how long I was in the Spire – it’s a prison on Stygeon Prime, one of the Empire’s black prisons. I was given a choice – given an opportunity. That’s how I ended up in the Imperial Academy on Serenno.” She looked up at Sabine with sudden frankness, her gaze steady. “I don’t know if you know what normally happens to pretty Twi’lek girls in the Empire, especially pretty Twi’lek girls whose fathers tried to kill the Emperor. But the Empire – Agent Beneke – gave me a chance that I shouldn’t have gotten. He trusted me beyond my skin color and my headtails. I won’t betray that.”

Sabine caught her lower lip between her teeth, but couldn’t help saying, “Agent Beneke’s dead, Hera.”

“That doesn’t mean it all goes away,” Hera said. “That it’s not worth anything.”

“Maybe not,” Sabine said, “but it does change things. Especially –” She hesitated, but in the end she just had to say it. “Especially because that was Free Ryloth out there. You know what the Empire will say about that.”

Hera bowed her head. “I have to trust the Empire, Sabine. It’s never failed me before.”

“Yeah,” Sabine said. “But it’s failed me.” She sighed. “Thank you for telling me, Hera.”

Hera nodded slowly, but her gaze was still distant, and she didn’t look up as Sabine slipped out of the cabin.

*

“I don’t get it,” Ezra said.

Kanan frowned. “Get what?”

“This. Any of this.” He swept a hand at the table in front of them, which currently boasted an empty bowl and the mug of caf Kanan was holding between his hands. The Inquisitor looked exhausted, but his jaw was set in what Ezra recognized as determination, like he was going to see this done or kill them both trying. It was probably weird that Ezra found that a little reassuring. “How is ‘the Force’ –” He traced scare-quotes in the air with hooked fingers, “– supposed to help me move something with my mind? That’s crazy.”

Kanan took one hand off his caf mug and turned it palm side up, curving his fingers slightly inwards. In response, the bowl lifted a few centimeters up off the table, remaining there for the space of three heartbeats before Kanan uncurled his fingers and it settled gently back down.

“Okay, but that’s you,” Ezra said. “You’re an Inquisitor! You’ve got powers. I’m just another Loth-rat.”

“You have that power too,” Kanan said. He bit his lip, brows furrowed in thought, and said, “Focus. Look inside yourself and concentrate. You know how to do this. You’ve probably done it before without thinking about it.”

Ezra had been staring at the bowl, but at this he looked up at Kanan again. “I’m pretty sure I would remember moving something without actually touching it.”

“Your rational mind probably didn’t process it that way,” Kanan said. “Most sentient beings – especially humans – are very good at either ignoring what seems impossible or finding a rational explanation for it. It wouldn’t have been something like this –” He flicked his fingers again, the bowl lifting upwards as he did so, “– it would have been having something just a few centimeters out of reach falling into your hand, or coming up with a winning pair of death dice every time –”

“No one plays death dice on Lothal,” Ezra said.

“– darts, then,” Kanan continued without hesitation. “Opening a door or a box that you’re sure was locked just a moment later. Little things that can be brushed off as just a run of good luck or a mistake. You ever done anything like that before?”

Ezra was quiet, turning the question over in his mind, looking back on the past fifteen years as far as he could remember. For some reason, the first thing that sprang to mind was something that must have happened when his parents were still here. He couldn’t remember how old he had been, but it couldn’t have been more than two or three, sitting on the floor in the old house and wailing for a toy that his mother had put out of reach on the kitchen counter. It had fallen as he had stretched his arms up towards it, and when Mira Bridger had come back into the room he had been forcing it to duel one of his other toys.

“Yeah,” he said, raising his gaze to Kanan. “I guess I have. But I still don’t understand –”

Kanan flattened his hand, letting the bowl settle back down onto the table. “Try closing your eyes,” he said. “Reach out if you need to – you can use your hand, it’s okay, just don’t touch it – and picture yourself moving it. Picture the bowl moving. If you can’t see it, then you aren’t limited by your eyes.”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” Ezra said, but he obeyed anyway.

“Get rid of the idea that things have to make sense,” Kanan said gently. “Lots of things in the galaxy don’t make sense, why should this?”

“Because _I’m_ doing it?” Ezra offered, and heard Kanan’s soft laughter. He cracked one eye open to see Kanan watching him, both his hands wrapped around his caf mug again.

“Concentrate,” Kanan said. “Feel, don’t think.”

Ezra frowned at him, but closed his eyes again anyway, stretching his hand out in the direction of the bowl. He couldn’t feel anything. _This is a joke. This isn’t actually going to work_ –

“I said don’t think,” Kanan said.

Ezra opened his eyes again. “Are you reading my mind?” he demanded, appalled.

Kanan favored him with a long-suffering look. “No. I can’t do that – and I wouldn’t, even if I could.”

“Why not?”

He looked surprised to be asked. “It’s unethical. And rude. Your thoughts should be your own, even if nothing else is.” For a moment he frowned. “That’s not true for every species,” he added slowly. “There are species with hive minds, for example, and others that share consciousness. Others that communicate entirely mind to mind. But for humans and most near-humans it’s a basic courtesy.”

He hesitated again. “‘Reading minds’ is kind of a misnomer, too. I can read surface emotions, sometimes, or if someone is thinking very clearly about something specific I can usually pick up on that. Some people are better at it than others; a lot of J – some Force-sensitives have what my people call a wild talent, a specific Force skill that’s usually pretty rare, or is common but manifests particularly strongly in certain individuals.”

“Like what?” Ezra dropped his hand back to the table, fascinated. “Do you?”

Kanan shrugged. “Not really. Well – not really. My line-master – one of my teachers, I mean – was able to see shatterpoints; that one’s really rare, and I can do it a little. Another of my teachers had a strong precognitive talent, but he couldn’t control it. Precognition’s standard, but for most of us we usually only see a few seconds ahead. Maybe a few hours or a few days if you’re meditating. Master Kenobi could see years ahead – or back, sometimes. But he couldn’t control it. And that far back or forward it’s useless; it’s all out of context and even trying to figure it out can do more harm than good. Even a few hours…visions are hard to interpret.” He shook his head, scratching his thumbnail against the inside of his wrist.

“What’s a shatterpoint?” Ezra asked, focusing on the unfamiliar word. Thinking about visions was a little too much for him right now.

Kanan’s frown returned. “It’s what we call the – the weak points, the flaws, of – of anything, really. The weak points where something can be broken – or made. In objects, in people…in events, sometimes. Like the flaws in a gemstone. It’s a type of vision, but it’s not quite the same thing as precognition. Most of the time, anyway. It’s a very rare wild talent.”

“And you can see these…shatterpoints?” Ezra asked.

He shrugged a shoulder. “I used to be able to. Sometimes wild talents run in a lineage, even though there’s nothing genetic involved. Some quirk of the Force.”

“What’s a lineage?”

Kanan bit the inside of his cheek, looking irritated at himself. “Stop trying to distract me, I’m not going to forget about the bowl.”

“Worth a try,” Ezra said, quirking a grin and trying to hide his disappointment. Maybe he could get Kanan to tell him another time. “I still don’t think this is going to work,” he added, looking at the bowl again and fixing its location on the table in his mind.

“Have faith,” Kanan said as he closed his eyes. “You have the ability to do this, Ezra. Concentrate.”

“Okay,” Ezra muttered. “Okay, I’m concentrating. Concentrating on doing something crazy…”

He pictured the table in his mind, just as he had last seen it: Kanan sitting across from him with his caf mug between his hands, the slightly dented and stained surface of the table, and the bowl. The bowl. The bowl was what he was supposed to be moving. Furrowing his brow, Ezra reached out with one hand, stopping just short of actually touching it. He pictured it lifting off the table, hovering above it the way Kanan had done –

He couldn’t help opening his eyes to see if it had worked, but the bowl was still sitting on the table where he had seen it last. Ezra slumped back in his seat, kicking a heel at the floor. “This isn’t going to work.”

“Sure it is,” Kanan said. “You’re still overthinking it. Don’t think of it as something you have to do, think of it as –”

“I thought I was overthinking it!”

Kanan rubbed at his forehead. “Feel,” he said. “Don’t think. In the Force you’re part of the universe. You’re connected to every living thing –”

“The bowl’s not alive!” Ezra protested.

Kanan pinched the bridge of his nose between his fingers. “Okay. Um –”

The door to the lounge slid open, Zeb looming up in the doorway with Chopper just behind him. “Are you done yet?” he demanded. “I’m hungry.”

“No, we’re –” Kanan began.

“Yes, we’re done,” Ezra said, taking the opportunity to flee. He ducked under Zeb’s arm into the hallway, hearing Kanan yell behind him, “This isn’t over!”

“How’s it going?” he heard Zeb ask Kanan.

“You ever tried to teach something that you’ve known since before you could walk?”

“Uh –”

“Yeah, like that,” Kanan said. There was a thump; Ezra glanced back to see that he had put his head down on the table. “My master made this look so easy.”

*

Cham found Ojeda in Alecto’s stateroom, sitting on the big round bed with her knees pulled up to her chest. Alecto was sitting beside her, but she didn’t look like she had any idea what to do; when Sinthya let Cham in she glanced up, her lekku going slack in relief before she stood up and joined him.

“I didn’t know,” he told her quietly as they stepped out of the main room into the smaller room that she used as a workshop; it currently held a mostly dismantled speeder bike and enough boxes of tools and parts to remind him comfortingly of her workshop back on Ryloth, destroyed along with the rest of the Syndulla family villa. “I was already in the Synedrion; Mishaan must have given the order as soon as I went in.”

To his surprise, Alecto just nodded. “That’s what Lysha told me.” She put her hand on his arm, making Cham look at her in surprise. Her mouth twisted a little in response, but she didn’t release him. “They didn’t take her to the brig. I told the marines she could stay here with me and Sinthya and whoever Lysha wanted and no one argued.”

“Rank has its privileges,” Cham observed; Alecto didn’t pull rank very often, but there was no one on the _Forlorn Hope_ who didn’t know exactly who she was and what her position was in the Syndulla clan. “How is she?”

“Upset.” Alecto glanced back over her shoulder in the direction of the main room, which was only separated from the workshop by a curtain of wooden beads. “And resigned. She already asked me if they were right, if she was the reason that the Imperials had come here.” She tilted her chin up, meeting Cham’s eyes, and said, “Is she?”

“I don’t see how she could be,” Cham said. “I think –” He hesitated, turning the thought over in his mind before he voiced it, “I’ve never encountered this Agent Kallus before, but I think that he would have said if Ojeda had led them here, either deliberately or by accident.”

Alecto nodded slowly. “Tell me the truth,” she added, her voice dropping until Cham had to lean in to hear her speak. “Do you believe that he’ll kill Hera?”

Cham squeezed his eyes shut. That was the question, wasn’t it. It was the question he had been asking himself since Mishaan had ripped the headset off him. “No,” he said finally. “The Empire gains nothing by killing her, not now that they know they can use her against me.”

“Us.”

He gave Alecto a sharp look, but didn’t contradict her. “Us,” he said instead. “I don’t know what they’ll do to her, but I’m more certain now than ever that they won’t kill her.”

Alecto nodded slowly, then seemed to realize that she still had her hand on his arm. She removed it and crossed her arms over her chest instead. “Doriah and Xiaan locked themselves in their cabin,” she said. “I think Xiaan’s trying to work herself to exhaustion. I checked on them while you were with the Synedrion. They’re…they’re them.” She shrugged.

“That’s as much as any of us can hope for,” Cham told her. “How are you?”

She looked surprised to be asked, but gave the question due consideration. “I don’t think I’ll be well again until I have my daughter back in my arms,” she said finally. “But I’ve felt that way for the past ten years.” She looked at him and shrugged. “And I didn’t hear it. If I had I’d feel differently. But it’s not…real.” She caught her lower lip between her teeth, looking over his shoulder before finally turning her attention back to him. “How are you?”

“I’m not sure,” Cham admitted. “I’m honestly trying not to think about it, though that’s not going as well as I’d like.”

Alecto gave him a look that he interpreted as _that’s probably a good thing_ ; Cham supposed that she was right. He didn’t want to be the kind of father who didn’t care about his child, especially after what had happened to Hera. He and Alecto had already had too many fights about just that.

After a moment she glanced away. “Does the Synedrion know?”

“Not yet.” Cham rubbed a hand over his chin. “And before you ask, Secchun took the news about as well as you’d imagine.”

“I wasn’t going to ask,” Alecto said dryly. She sighed. “And Mishaan? What will you do about her?”

Cham shook his head. “I don’t know. I’m going to speak to her now. She was within her rights to do what she did,” he admitted, “but the way she went about it –”

“You are Syndulla,” Alecto said, as if that was that was the only thing that mattered. Maybe for her it was. “And the leader of this fleet.”

“Exactly her rationale,” Cham pointed out.

Alecto rolled her eyes and glanced aside, studying a faded pod-racing poster on the wall. After a moment, she said, “If she distrusts you, she can go to another ship in the fleet.”

“Where?” Cham said. “There are no Secura ships in the fleet, or any from their allied clans. If she leaves the _Hope_ , then none of the Syndulla ships or our allies will have her. If she goes to one of my rivals…”

“She knows too much about us for that,” Alecto said, looking back at him.

“Yes,” Cham admitted. He sighed. “I’ll speak to her; I’m sure she acted in the heat of the moment and meant nothing amiss.”

Alecto’s lip curled. “Of course.” She looked at him for a few more moments, long enough that Cham shifted, wondering what else he was meant to say, then she turned away, gesturing in the direction of the main room.

He stepped towards the curtain, then paused. “Just one question.”

Alecto’s eyebrows went up. “What?”

“Where exactly are you planning to use that speeder bike when you’re done with it?” Cham said, tilting his head at it. “I don’t believe that any of the ships in the fleet have a racing track.”

Alecto was so startled she burst into laughter, and she was still laughing as they emerged into the main room, making both Sinthya and Ojeda look up.

Ojeda started to stand, then froze as Cham waved her back down. He sat down on her other side and said, “I am very sorry for how you were treated.”

Ojeda shrugged gracefully. “It was nothing, Uncle,” she said. “If it had been the Empire it would have been worse. “I just –” She hesitated.

“Yes, Ojeda?” Cham asked gently.

“Was I responsible for this? Everyone says I wasn’t, but – you will tell me the truth, won’t you, Uncle?” Her eyes were surprisingly sharp when she met his gaze, enough to remind Cham that she might have been a slave and a courtesan, but she had been a spy too, and his sister’s daughter.

He put a hand on her shoulder. “I swear to you, Ojeda, that this was not your fault. Nothing I’ve seen suggests that you had anything to do with this, on purpose or otherwise.”

Ojeda studied his face for a long moment before finally nodding. “Thank you, Uncle,” she said.

Cham squeezed her shoulder, then released her, nodding to Sinthya and Alecto. He was reaching for the control panel by the door when Ojeda said, “Uncle.”

He turned back towards her. “What is it?”

She raised her chin. “Why did you bring me here? I’m not a genius like Xiaan or a pilot like Doriah; I can’t do anything here. I’m useless here. Back on Naboo I had a purpose, I was good at something. And I can’t do that anymore. So why did you bring me here?”

“Because you’re family,” Cham said. “And we don’t leave family behind.”

Mishaan Secura was on the bridge. As he came in, the various crew members on duty looked at him and then quickly back at their stations, suddenly focusing on their duties with the kind of fervor they usually reserved for battle. Mishaan, in her command chair, didn’t look back until Cham came around the side of it and stood in front of her, then her gaze flickered upwards to him. She didn’t stand.

“General Syndulla.”

“Captain Secura,” Cham said. “I think we need to talk.”

She looked at him for a long moment, then nodded and stood up, every eye on the bridge tracking them as Mishaan made her way to the war room, Cham following behind her. At the moment the room was empty, the holotable and screens dark, though cracks splintered across one of them. The lights came on as the door shut behind them and Mishaan turned back towards him.

“I know what you’re going to say, General,” she said, clasping her hands behind her back. “I acted as I saw fit under the circumstances, since I knew that you wouldn’t.”

“Something you felt compelled to say in front of the entire Synedrion, rather than in private,” Cham said. “I understand why you did what you did, Mishaan. But you know as well as I that this fleet is not half as united as either of us would prefer it to be and announcing that you had gone behind my back to the entire Synedrion does nothing to aid that, especially after the attack. Do you understand?”

Mishaan set her jaw. “Yes, General.”

“Should I ask why you did it?”

She hesitated. “The Synedrion needed to know that the security of the fleet wasn’t being compromised because of your familial affections,” she said at last. “And – General, I didn’t, and I still don’t, believe that you would have taken that step, not after what happened with your daughter. That girl –”

“My niece has a name, Captain.”

“Ojeda Syndulla has been with the Empire for a decade, General,” Mishaan said. “You cannot keep the secret of what she was forever. You know what this fleet thinks of collaborators. If there was even a chance that she was an Imperial, it had to be addressed and investigated immediately, before rumor could spread. Can you say that you would have done so, General Syndulla? Or that the Synedrion would have believed you if you said you had?”

“Do you believe that I would act against the good of this fleet?” Cham said.

“You did yesterday, General,” Mishaan said, her gaze fixed on his. “The Synedrion doesn’t know that, but I do. And if they found out about your daughter – your _Imperial_ daughter – then they would never trust you again. Now they’ll only think of your niece, and they’ll think of her as innocent.”

“You expect me to believe that you went behind my back out of the goodness of your heart?” Cham said.

“You can believe whatever you want, General Syndulla,” Mishaan said. “I left my clan to be here because I believed in our people, in our fight. Everything I do, I do for Ryloth.”

*

There were stormtroopers waiting for them in the hangar when the _Ghost_ finally landed back inside the Lothal Imperial Complex.

“Those weren’t there before,” Sabine observed, standing up to lean over Kanan’s shoulder and peer at them. “Is that a bad sign?”

“I doubt it’s a good one,” Zeb said.

“I’m sure it’s nothing,” Hera said, flipping switches to shut the _Ghost_ ’s engines down and ignoring the nagging voice in the back of her mind that asked if it mightn’t be better to put them on standby, just in case they needed to make a quick exit…

She glanced at Kanan, expecting him to say something about the stormtroopers, but instead saw that he was frowning, his brow furrowed in concentration. “What is it, love?”

He blinked once. “I sense –” He stopped abruptly, then stood.

Hera caught his sleeve, making him look back at her. “What is it?”

He shook his head. “Let’s not keep our friends in white waiting,” he said, nodding towards the stormtroopers, who had started towards the _Ghost_. There were only two of them, Hera thought, glancing back out the viewport as she got up to follow her crew out of the cockpit. They couldn’t be more than a precaution, if that.

They approached as soon as Kanan and Hera came down the _Ghost_ ’s ramp, the rest of the crew following warily behind them. Hera noted that Zeb kept one hand close to the bo-rifle on his back; Sabine merely crossed her arms over her chest, less obvious about her weapons. Ezra just looked wary.

“Inquisitor, Agent Syndulla,” said the nearest stormtrooper; she had a faint Corellian accent. “Agent Kallus wants to see you immediately.”

Hera couldn’t help the way both her jaw and her lekku tightened. She had sent her report back to Naboo while they were still in hyperspace, but Kallus was still senior to her. If he had lied about what happened back on the _Relentless_ – or even if he had told the truth and the agent who had read the report wasn’t a friend of Beneke’s – 

She couldn’t do anything about that now. If it came to that, she was prepared to defend herself in front of a tribunal; six years in the ISB had given her a small cache of favors to call on, and she had probably inherited a few of Agent Beneke’s.

She glanced at Kanan, who just shrugged. “Guess we didn’t have anywhere better to be,” he said, then turned back to the others. “Stay here.”

Sabine looked like he had just ripped her favorite paint sprayer out of her hands and then jumped on it a few times. “Why?” she demanded.

“Because I said so,” Kanan said. “Stay here until Hera or I come back, no matter what you see or hear. You understand?”

“Why?” Zeb said.

“Just trust me on this one,” Kanan said, ignoring the look Hera shot him. “None of you leave this hangar.” He hesitated for a moment, then added in a voice Hera could tell was meant only for Zeb and his sensitive Lasat ears, “Especially Ezra. You do what you have to do to keep him here.”

“What’s so special about the kid?” Zeb said, softening his voice to an extent that was remarkable for a being that big.

“I’ll explain later,” Kanan said. He clapped Zeb on the arm. “Hopefully.”

“What does _that_ mean?” Zeb demanded, his eyes narrowing and his ears going up.

“What _does_ that mean?” Hera said as Kanan turned back to her. “What do you sense?”

He shook his head. “Come on. Let’s not keep Agent Kallus waiting.”

Kanan’s instincts had been pretty good even when he had just been the handsome gunslinger Hera had picked up on a whim on Gorse; now that he was an Inquisitor they were even better. Hera couldn’t help being glad of the weight of her sidearm on her hip and her holdout blaster in her boot holster as they made their way through the corridors; she was only glad that the stormtroopers hadn’t had orders to escort them. That was a good sign. On the other hand, it meant that they had remained back with the others, which wasn’t.

Kanan got steadily more and more agitated the closer they got to Kallus’s borrowed office; Hera didn’t know if it was evident to anyone who didn’t know him as well as she did, but she finally flattened a hand on his chest and pushed him back into the nearest empty doorway. “What’s with you? You look like you’re about to jump out of your skin.”

“I –” Kanan caught his lower lip between his teeth. “It’s nothing. I just –”

Hera rested her hand on his arm, looking up at him in concern. “What is it? It’s my superior officer we’re getting called in to see; if one of us should be panicking, it shouldn’t be you.”

“It’s not – that,” Kanan said, forcing the words. He hesitated for a moment, like he was going to say something else, then shook his head.

“Talk to me,” Hera said. “You know you can trust me with anything.”

“Yeah.” He nodded a little, but his gaze was distant. After a moment he reached up to cup her face between his hands. “I love you,” he said. “You know that, right?”

Hera nodded, her concern growing, and turned her face up to be kissed as Kanan lowered his head to hers. She put her arms around him, feeling his heart hammering against her chest as she held him close to her.

“I love you,” he said again, the words humming against her lips. “You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me and I don’t regret a moment I spent with you. Not one.”

“Kanan, you’re worrying me,” Hera said. “What are you afraid of?”

Instead of answering, he kissed her again, lipping her mouth open into a deep, desperate kiss. Hera kissed him back, her fingers digging into the back of his shirt as she held him against her. This close, she couldn’t miss the fact that he was trembling.

“I love you,” he said again when they finally broke apart, gasping for breath. “Let’s go see your boss.”

“I love you too,” Hera said. Her heart was pounding nearly as hard as his had been; it took everything she had not to reach for his hand as they stepped back out into the hallway. “And he’s not my boss.”

Kanan got more and more agitated the closer they got to Agent Kallus’s office, which in his case meant that his back got straighter and straighter and his stride stiffer, his jaw clenched so tightly that Hera could practically hear his teeth grinding. His gaze flickered sideways towards the closed office door next to Agent Kallus’s office as they passed it, but he didn’t say anything.

Hera touched the back of his hand reassuringly as they paused outside Kallus’s door. “Don’t worry,” she said. “I’m the one who’s going to be in trouble, not you.”

Kanan gave her a thin smile. “I love you,” he said again, then held a hand out over the control pad. The door slid open without being touched, making Agent Kallus, sitting at his desk, look up in startled surprise.

The woman with him was standing. She was slim beneath the heavy black fabric of her cloak and skirts, most of her face obscured by a veil that revealed bright blue eyes and a strip of green skin. The pair of curved lightsabers on her belt gave away her position in the Empire.

“Hello, Stray,” said the First Inquisitor. “Time to come home now.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Note that Sabine's backstory here doesn't exactly match with what was revealed in Rebels S2, since it was already planned before the season began airing.
> 
> As always, love and grateful thanks to my beta Xena, who continuously goes above and beyond even when (especially when) I'm a mess and the chapter is a mess.
> 
> I do daily progress reports over on Tumblr, under the tag "[daily fic snippet](http://bedlamsbard.tumblr.com/tagged/daily%20fic%20snippet)," if you want to keep track of what I'm working on or get a hint of what's happening in the next few chapters. (I'm usually writing three chapters ahead of the last posted chapter.)


	17. The Hound

Everything around Hera suddenly seemed to have turned to white noise. She wasn’t aware that she had reached for Kanan until she felt the soft fabric of his wrist wrappings beneath her fingers and then she clutched at his wrist desperately, as though by doing so she could stop whatever was about to happen.

She saw the First Inquisitor’s bright blue gaze flicker impassively from Kanan to her, then back again as though Hera had been weighed and dismissed as being of no consequence. It was a familiar expression; Hera had seen it so many times in the Academy and in the service that until she had met Kanan she had thought it was just the way people looked at her. An Inquisitor, she knew, was probably the only being in the service who wasn’t dismissing her for not being human. Inquisitors looked that way at anyone who wasn’t Force-sensitive.

“We’re on an op,” she said. Her voice sounded distant and tinny even to her own ears, like something over a bad comm channel. “Ka – the Inquisitor can’t leave in the middle of an op. Our team always works together.”

“You and your team are no longer on this assignment, Agent Syndulla,” Agent Kallus said, making Hera jump; somehow she had managed to completely forget that he was there. He was still seated, an elbow on the desk as he watched them. He didn’t look any happier about having two Inquisitors in his office than Hera felt, though presumably for different reasons. “The Inquisitor’s absence will have no effect on that count. Not that his presence was ever asked for in the first place,” he observed as an afterthought.

“We’re a team,” Hera said again, folding her fingers more tightly around Kanan’s wrist and risking a glance at him, since he hadn’t said anything yet. He looked as though he was going to be sick. Her voice was trembling as she added, “We always work as a team.”

If the First Inquisitor had paid any attention to the conversation, she didn’t show it. Neither did Kanan. They were still staring at each other as if having some kind of silent, invisible battle, until finally Kanan jerked his head aside, breaking the staring contest. He was trembling under Hera’s hand.

The First Inquisitor came around the side of Kallus’s desk, moving with the same easy grace that Kanan had, as if gravity was just a mild inconvenience. Kanan drew in a ragged breath, tensing, but the woman stopped just beyond arm’s reach and clasped her hands behind her back.

Hera had actually met the First Inquisitor before on a joint operation a few years ago, when she had been temporarily assigned to work with Hera and Kanan. She knew that the First was a Mirialan, that she and Kanan knew each other in some way that neither had ever bothered to explain, and that she was the only Inquisitor in the Crucible as powerful as Kanan was, though Kanan hadn’t said how he knew that or why that was. She was, as far as Hera knew, reasonable.

“Reasonable” didn’t mean much when it came to Inquisitors, even in Hera’s admittedly limited acquaintance.

If Kanan had been ordered back to Mustafar, he would have gone without protest. There was only one reason to send another Inquisitor to bring him in – and this particular Inquisitor of all of them, if there weren’t more lurking behind a door somewhere.

She could see the knowledge on Kanan’s face as she looked up at him. He tore his gaze away from the First Inquisitor to look back at her, then reached up slowly to cover her hand with his own, working her fingers free of their iron grip even as she tried to hold on. His lips parted a little, like he wanted to say something, but whatever it was died unspoken on his lips. Back at the Crucible they had taken his voice from him, Hera remembered. It had been weeks after he had returned before he could even reliably form complete sentences, and he still lapsed back to that whenever he was particularly stressed.

“This is a mistake,” she whispered.

Kanan didn’t say anything. He just gripped her fingers with his own, his gaze desperate, and Hera realized with sinking horror that she couldn’t even kiss him goodbye. Not here, not in front of the First or Agent Kallus. They couldn’t even have that. Even this was too much; Hera should have stepped away, should have tried to be professional, but she couldn’t – she just couldn’t.

“Stray,” the First said again.

Kanan bit his lip and looked down, then pulled gently free of her hand, his fingers sliding along her palm until they had to let him go. Hera turned to watch him go, her fists clenching as the First Inquisitor put her hand on his arm, Kanan glancing back at Hera as the door slid open for them. At her sharp gasp he looked forward again, his whole body tensing before the First propelled him out into the corridor. The door slid shut behind them with a decisively final sound.

Hera stared after them, her heart hammering in her chest. There had been four other Inquisitors in the hallway waiting for Kanan and the First.

“Agent Syndulla,” Agent Kallus said.

It took everything Hera had to turn back to him, settling her hands behind her back. “Sir.”

Kallus eyed her. “You and your team have been removed from active duty as of ten hours ago,” he said finally, after a pause long enough that Hera could hear the murmur of voices from the hallway, the words incomprehensible. “You and your team are ordered to report to ISB Regional HQ to Naboo for assessment and evaluation. Try not to be late.”

“Yes, sir,” Hera whispered.

“If it was up to me,” Agent Kallus added, “your entire team would have been put up against a wall and shot as soon as you returned to Lothal. However, the Bureau invested a great deal of money and resources in you, Syndulla, so for now you may continue breathing. That may not be a permanent condition for much longer, especially without Agent Beneke to champion you.” His lip curled slightly at his rival’s name.

“Yes, sir,” Hera said again; it was the only thing she could think of. “And – and the Inquisitor, sir?”

“That’s the Crucible’s business and no longer any of yours,” Agent Kallus said. “I want you and your team off Lothal as soon as your ship is refueled.”

“Yes, sir,” Hera repeated. He had already picked up a datapad, as clear a dismissal as any she had ever seen, so Hera saluted and turned to go, half-hoping that Kanan and the Inquisitors were still there.

They weren’t, of course. They were all gone, taking Kanan with them, as if he had never been here at all.

*

_Five years ago_

“You’re angry, Jedi,” the Hunter said. “Every moment of every day. It burns inside you.” He trailed a hand idly over the back of Kanan’s neck, making him flinch at the unexpected contact, but by now he knew better than to pull away or protest. “Why won’t you embrace it? Let it give you power. You cripple yourself, Jedi, if you keep on like this you will never be what you could be. And you will die.”

Kanan didn’t respond, just stared straight ahead at the opposite wall. All he did was tighten his hands against his knees, his fingers digging into the thick, soft fabric of his trousers.

They were in one of the smaller rooms in the Crucible, alone for once – no other trainees, none of the other trainers. Kanan wasn’t sure whether or not to be glad about that. On the one hand it meant that they didn’t have an audience and Kanan had had more than enough of other trainees staring at him, looking for the most opportune moment to strike and eliminate a rival. On the other hand it meant that the Hunter could do anything he wanted without the Whip reining him in or Patience trying to interfere, and Kanan’s wounds from the last time were still healing.

The Hunter gripped the back of his neck and bent his lips to Kanan’s ear. “I can feel the darkness inside you,” he breathed. “The shadows that swallow up the light. Why deny what must be? What do you gain from this stubbornness? The Jedi are gone. Their fire has gone out of the galaxy. Why do you persist in clinging to the dead?”

Kanan wasn’t aware of his tears until the first one dripped off his chin and onto his knee.

He sensed rather than saw the Hunter’s smile. The Pau’an reached down and caught his chin in one hand, turning Kanan’s head towards him. Kanan stared up at him, his jaw set despite the pain of his master’s fingers digging into his skin.

“You can feel it in the Force,” the Hunter breathed. “The darkness. It calls to you. Embrace it.” He stroked a thumb over Kanan’s jaw, smiling.

The door behind them slid open, making the Hunter’s grip tighten enough that Kanan couldn’t help his hiss of pain.

“Hunter,” said a faintly familiar woman’s voice. “Up to your tricks again?”

The Hunter kept hold of Kanan’s chin, keeping him from turning to see the speaker. Kanan was attuned enough to him in the Force now that he could feel the Hunter’s displeasure, but the new arrival was barely a shadow in the Force, an oil slick that slid away from his mind. Something about it felt familiar, though he couldn’t put a finger on where he knew it from.

“First,” the Hunter said coolly. “I didn’t expect to see you here for this.”

“I was in the sector,” said the woman. Kanan got the faintest sense of impatience before she added, “Does your latest plaything know you broke your old toys?”

“They were weak,” said the Hunter.

“As long as I don’t have to clean up the mess again,” the stranger said.

The Hunter scowled. “Do you have a purpose here? You’re not usually one for socializing.”

“The Whip sent me to tell you playtime’s over. You and your pet should join the others.”

“Errand girl now, First?”

“I had nothing better to do.”

“Oh, good,” the Hunter said. His grip tightened to bruising strength as he bent his lips to Kanan’s ear and breathed, “Kill her.”

Kanan was moving before he had even consciously processed the words, lightsaber flying off his belt and into his hands as he spun, pushing up off his knees and into a leap. He got an impression of black fabric before the woman’s own lightsabers were in her hands, the blades igniting in time to beat back his attack. She disengaged and ducked under his blade as he swung at her, one foot coming out to knock him off his feet.

Kanan spun over the attempted kick, his lightsaber sweeping around in a backhanded stroke that she beat aside with one of her lightsabers, throwing herself in a backflip over the next. Her black overskirts flared around her as she landed in a crouch in the corridor outside the room, her blue eyes very bright over her fluttering half-veil. She swept her lightsabers out to either side of her, a pair of burning red blades on curving silver-and-black hilts.

“Bored of your latest pet already, Hunter?” she spat. “I’m surprised. Usually you can do your own dirty work.”

Kanan spun his lightsaber hilt around in his hand, feeling the Hunter’s approach behind him, and knew better than to wait for a second command. He lunged forward and the woman spun as she came up out of her crouch, slamming a kick into his sternum that sent him staggering back into the Hunter before his master shoved him forward.

“I don’t have time for this, child,” the Inquisitor said, but Kanan was already moving, his lightsaber sweeping out in a stroke that would have bisected her if she hadn’t leapt backwards over it, bouncing off her fingertips before coming back on her feet, locking the ends of her lightsabers together to form a saberstaff.

Kanan ducked the blow that she swept at him, then blocked the next, flipping his lightsaber hilt around in his hand from a traditional grip to a reverse one as he did so. He came up beneath her stroke, inside her guard, his lightsaber sweeping up between them before she caught a foot under his ankle and tripped him. Kanan turned his fall into a roll, bouncing back to his feet in time to beat off her downstroke as she swung at him. He flipped over the backstroke as the second blade came around, sweeping his lightsaber sideways to steady himself as he landed. He saw her gaze flicker quickly to the hilt in his hand, a tiny wrinkle appearing between her brows, then she was attacking and Kanan was upright again, parrying each stroke frantically as she beat him backwards down the corridor. The Hunter followed lazily behind her, his own lightsaber hilt in one hand.

_She’s better than me,_ Kanan realized, and felt the sudden murmur of the Force telling him that the corridor was about to open into the big training room. On her next stroke he leapt backwards without looking, flipping in mid-air to land in a crouch with one hand on the floor in front of him and his lightsaber swept out to his side. He was vaguely aware that there were more people in the room than he was used to as they scattered away from him, then came back to form a circle around him and the new Inquisitor as she strode towards him. The Hunter paused on the inner ring of the circle, tucking his hands behind his back as he watched.

Kanan straightened upright, bringing his lightsaber in front of him in a salute. To his surprise the Inquisitor returned it, but that instant of calm was the only warning he had before she was on him.

She was faster than any of the trainees he had faced, the kind of speed and skill that Kanan hadn’t seen in years – Jedi fast.

That was fine. So was he.

He leaned back as she swung at him, his lightsaber coming up to block the backstroke. An instant later she disconnected the two halves of her lightsaber, coming at him in a whirling dervish of black skirts and red blades. Kanan threw himself over the blades and landed upright, barely bringing his lightsaber up in time to block her attack. She disengaged one blade and swung low, a blow that should have severed both legs at the knees, and Kanan grabbed frantically for the Force.

It sent her flying backwards, stumbling into the watching Inquisitors and trainees before she was shoved forward. Kanan wiped the back of one hand over his mouth, fingers trembling with the power he hadn’t willingly touched in weeks, and then had to dodge away from her attack again, his blade a blur in front of him as she drove him mercilessly around the interior of the ring.

Finally he must have left an opening, because she snapped a kick up into his wrist that made him drop his lightsaber, then spun into another kick that Kanan barely dodged, spinning around empty-handed to grab at her, trying to use his superior height and weight to gain some kind of advantage. Instead he got a handful of her veil and dragged at it because there was nothing else he could do, fabric tearing as he pulled her around. She slammed an elbow into his face, sending him staggering backwards before a kick to his sternum knocked him onto his back.

Kanan flung his hand out for his fallen lightsaber; it flew towards him – and the woman caught it in mid-air, replacing one of her own lightsabers on the back of her belt as she did so. She ignited it and stepped towards him, putting a foot on his chest to keep him on his back as Kanan started to push himself upright.

“You might be the Hunter’s newest pet, but no Inquisitor trained you,” she said. “Who are you?”

Kanan stared up at her, at the face revealed by her torn veil, and said disbelievingly, “Barriss Offee?”

An instant later she dropped her full weight on his chest, her knees digging into his sternum as she knelt on top of him. Kanan gritted his teeth as she brought his own lightsaber blade close enough to his throat that he could feel the heat from it. “Who _are_ you?” she repeated.

“Kan – Caleb Dume,” he gasped. “Depa Billaba’s padawan.”

That had been after she had already been arrested, but he knew who she was. They all had. By the end, the Order had had senior padawans performing the duties that had previously been given to junior Knights, including shepherding younglings and initiates on various rituals and training missions. Barriss Offee had been with his cohort on several of those; she would have chaperoned his Gathering if events hadn’t precluded that.

Her blue eyes went wide with recognition. “You should be dead,” she snapped. “Why aren’t you dead?”

Kanan curled his lips back from his teeth. “The feeling’s mutual.”

Barriss sneered at him. “Look where you are, stray. Now is hardly the time to be so high and mighty.” She pushed the lightsaber closer against his throat, making Kanan hiss a protest out through his teeth before she abruptly deactivated it and slammed the hilt down flat against the floor by his head. “How did you survive?”

“I got lucky,” Kanan spat.

“I would hardly call this luck.”

“Yeah, well, everyone’s luck runs out sometime. I guess you’d be pretty familiar with that concept.”

“His master sacrificed herself so that he could flee.”

Kanan couldn’t help his instinctive flinch as the Hunter strode into the ring, Barriss’s mouth turning downwards into a frown as she recognized the reaction – she could hardly miss it from where she was at the moment.

“Noble, but foolish,” the Hunter went on. “And ultimately for nothing.” He stopped behind Kanan, looking down at them. Kanan shut his eyes so that he didn’t have to see him, breathing hard.

“And you just found him?” Barriss said derisively. “Like you did the others?”

The Hunter’s amusement curled through the Force like smoke. “Hardly. His lover turned him in, and he volunteered.”

Kanan caught the edge of Barriss’s surprise before she straightened abruptly, making him grunt as her weight shifted. He looked up to see her returning her other lightsaber to her belt, reaching up to fix her veil before remembering that Kanan had torn it away.

Kanan pushed himself upright, wary of another attack, and retrieved his lightsaber from where Barriss had left it on the floor. He was aware of the watching eyes of the other trainees, all of them staring hungrily at him and waiting for him to falter in some way.

Not just trainees, he realized as Barriss stalked away from him, the ranks of watching Inquisitors parting silently to let her pass. Full Inquisitors too, at least two dozen of them. Kanan had never seen so many Inquisitors in the same place before.

He hadn’t realized there were so many of them.

The Hunter laid a hand on his neck, steering him out of the center of the ring. Kanan felt the ranks of Inquisitors around him sway and eddy, shifting position in some alien pattern he couldn’t identify. He saw Patience standing off to one side with her droids around her, including the one she had repaired after the Hunter had fried it. The Whip was near the front of the room, his arms crossed over his chest. Barriss had removed herself to the opposite side of the chamber, her expression unreadable and the shreds of her veil framing her face. Trainees stood in nervous clumps apart from the Inquisitors, eyeing them warily.

“You did well,” the Hunter said against Kanan’s ear, his breath warm on his bare skin. “Better than I expected.”

Kanan didn’t respond, his own breath rasping in his throat. Just another damned test, and one he had passed, because all the Hunter had wanted was to know if he would jump when ordered. He caught Barriss’s eye from the other room; she bit her lip and then looked away as the Hunter stroked a finger idly across Kanan’s throat.

“Why are they here?” he made himself ask. There was a chance he would be punished for the question; there was an equal chance that the Hunter would just answer it. Kanan could never tell, and he had scars from the times he had guessed wrong.

He felt the Hunter smile. “A Hunt,” he said. “Time to prove your mettle, my Hound.”

*

_Present day_

When the door slid open, the only thing that kept Kanan for going for his lightsaber the way he would have done at the Crucible was Barriss’s restraining hand on his arm.

There were four other Inquisitors waiting in the corridor for him, putting an end to any lingering suspicions that he might have had – and he hadn’t had any – that this was just an aggressively assigned new operation. One of them, a Togruta female with red skin and gold striped lekku, had been a trainee with him at the Crucible; she hadn’t earned her name yet when he had left. The second was a Theelin female called Verity, the third a big rocky-skinned humanoid known as the Hangman.

The fourth was Patience. The face plates of her helmet slid back as the First pushed Kanan out into the corridor, revealing a smile that Kanan still had nightmares about sometimes. She stepped forward and trailed a gloved finger down his cheek, smiling as one of her droids came up over her shoulder and clacked its pincers at him.

“Hello, Hunter’s Hound,” she said. “We haven’t seen you in _such_ a long time.”

The door slid shut behind Kanan and Barriss with a decisively final click; Patience’s smile widened. Her gaze swept downwards as she ran her tongue across her teeth, the gesture thoughtful and deliberate.

“We can do this the easy way or the fun way,” she said. “Which is it going to be?”

In response Kanan reached down with his free hand and pulled his lightsaber off his belt. He saw the four Inquisitors in front of him tense – Barriss’s grip on his arm betrayed nothing but boredom – before he flipped the hilt around in his hand and offered it to Patience.

“I was hoping for fun,” she said, reaching for it. Before she could take it, the Hangman reached over her shoulder and pulled it out of Kanan’s hand, making Patience glare at him and another droid float out from behind her, electricity glimmering on its pincers as it advanced on him.

“Call off your toy,” he said. “Or lose it.”

Patience raised her fingers in a gesture that must have meant something to the droid, because it settled back on her shoulder. It and the other droid flashed their optical receptors at each other for a few seconds, then both turned their attention on Kanan.

_The Hunter’s dead,_ Kanan reminded himself. _The Hunter’s dead and all these guys remember is his Hound._ It still took him a moment to settle himself before he could draw himself up to his full height, forcing Patience and Verity to tilt their heads back to look at him. “You know, you guys could have just called,” he drawled, not bothering with his Core accent. “I would have thrown you a party.”

Verity, who had only met him once, looked nonplussed, but Patience’s smile returned. “Oh, I missed the mouth you had on you,” she purred. “It’s such a pity that the Hunter put a stop to that; it would have been a shame if it had been permanent. So selfish of him.”

Barriss snorted softly, making her veil flutter. “Let’s go,” she said brusquely. “The longer we linger here, the more questions the locals will ask.”

“What about him?” Verity asked, gesturing at Kanan and reaching for the binders on the back of her belt.

“He’ll cooperate,” Barriss said, shoving Kanan forward. “His team is here.”

“I thought Jedi didn’t have attachments,” the Togruta observed, her voice clinical.

“I’m not a Jedi,” Kanan snapped. “Anymore.”

“So you claim,” the Hangman said. “Repeatedly.” He hooked Kanan’s lightsaber onto his belt, turning away dismissively, though Kanan could tell that his shoulders had tensed the instant his back was to Kanan. Evidently some of Kanan’s reputation for killing other Inquisitors had survived in the Crucible, even after four years away. It was always nice to be remembered.

Barriss kept her grip on his arm as the five Inquisitors marched him down the corridor. The Lothal Imperial Complex wasn’t heavily garrisoned, but the handful of stormtroopers and officers they passed all drew back at their approach, following the small cavalcade with wide eyes. By now Kanan was a familiar presence in the complex, but the others were new; most members of the Imperial service would go their whole careers without ever seeing an Inquisitor, and six in the same place…well, that was never a good thing. Let alone five escorting a sixth in what were clearly very doubtful circumstances, binders or not.

It had been over a year since the last time Kanan had been around any other Inquisitors, and he had somehow managed to forget how their presence distorted his perception of the Force, like pebbles thrown into a still pond. Only Barriss seemed not to affect it at all, the Force sliding off her like water off oiled glass. It clawed at the inside of his head, making him grit his teeth and try to reaccustom himself to the sensation. As it was, he was hyper-aware of every movement they made, of every emotion that stirred the surface of the Force – the breadth of the Hangman’s shoulders, the click of Verity’s heels on the floor, Patience’s complement of droids muttering to each other. Barriss’s hand on his arm was like a vice. 

_This isn’t a Hunt. This can’t be a Hunt. I’d know if it was a Hunt._

He’d be dead already if this had been a Hunt.

“If Lord Vader and the Whip really thought I’d gone rogue, they would have sent everyone,” Kanan made himself say, forcing his voice to a bored drawl. “Or bombed the Imperial Complex from orbit.”

“One of the last Jedi in the galaxy?” Verity said, glancing back at him. “Our masters have plans for you. And you without the Hunter to protect you anymore, either.”

Kanan came to an abrupt halt, dragging Barriss to a stop. “I wouldn’t call what the Hunter did to me ‘protection,’” he spat.

Verity’s lip curled. “What would you call it, Hound?”

He had to break her gaze, his breath dragging out wordlessly before Barriss forced him forwards again. He stumbled for an instant, then recovered his footing as they pressed on, but he knew the slip had been seen and noted by all five other Inquisitors.

They were out of the headquarters buildings now, passing the hangar entrances. Kanan couldn’t help glancing at them as they passed. _Let the kids have listened for once, let them have stayed inside the_ Ghost –

Given that it was his team he was talking about, he should have known better.

“ _Kanan_!”

He turned quickly, his arm twisting in the First’s grip, to see Sabine standing in the entrance to the hangar where the _Ghost_ was docked. She put her hands on her blaster grips as all the Inquisitors but Barriss turned to look at her. Ezra and Zeb appeared behind her a moment later, Chopper shoving past them and out into the hallway with his electroprod out. Patience’s droids detached themselves from her to float in his direction, their own pincers flashing with electricity.

“Well, _hello_ there,” Patience said, her smile broadening. “And who might you be? I would _so_ like to meet the Hound’s friends.”

“Go back inside,” Kanan ordered. “Go inside and wait for Hera.”

Zeb pushed forward, putting himself between Sabine and Ezra and the Inquisitors. “Kanan, you all right?” he asked, his gaze flicking from one Inquisitor to the other, clearly mentally matching himself against them.

“I’m fine,” Kanan said. “Go inside and wait for Hera. That’s an order.” He glanced down at Chopper, who seemed to be in some kind of standoff with Patience’s droids. “That means you too, Chop.”

That got him a torrent of angry beeping, at least before Zeb reached out and snagged the top of Chopper’s dome with one hand to pull him back. “You sure you’re all right?”

“I said I’m fine,” Kanan repeated. “Go inside.” 

“Or stay,” Verity suggested. “I’m sure we could find something to –”

The words ended in a high-pitched gasp as Kanan spun, pulling out of the First’s suddenly loose grip to slam Verity into the corridor wall. He pushed his forearm up against her throat, snarling, “You even think about coming near my team and I swear on what’s left of my soul I’ll kill you.”

Verity let out a squeaking sound just as the Hangman grabbed Kanan by the ponytail and dragged him back. Kanan knocked his arm aside and spun to face him, his hands clenching into fists at his sides as he saw the Hangman and the unnamed Togruta both reaching for their lightsabers. Patience had her arms crossed, a droid hovering at either shoulder, and the First just looked bored. Sabine and Zeb, on the other hand, had blasters and bo-rifle, respectively, raised.

“Kanan,” Zeb said, the syllables not quite a question.

Kanan raised his empty hands. “Easy now, ladies, gentlemen,” he said. “Just a little Inquisitor politics. Nothing to worry about.” He looked back at Sabine and Zeb. “Go inside. Close the door. Wait for Hera.”

“Kanan, I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Sabine said

“Go. Inside.”

Zeb hesitated too long for Kanan’s comfort, then let go of his bo-rifle with one hand and grabbed Sabine’s shoulder, pulling her back inside the hangar and shoving Ezra back when he tried to dart past them. Chopper let out a last threatening trill and followed, his electroprod still outstretched; he was the last thing Kanan saw before the doors closed behind them.

“I –” Kanan said, and Verity punched him hard enough that his head snapped sideways.

“Don’t you _ever_ touch me again, Hound.” She drew back her arm for another blow before the Togruta grabbed her elbow, muttering something in her ear. Verity had only met Kanan once before, back during a Hunt five years earlier; the Togruta, on the other hand, had been a trainee with him.

Kanan spat blood onto the durasteel floor of the corridor. He saw two stormtroopers come around the corner in front of them, spot the group of Inquisitors, and immediately turn around. Rubbing at his sore jaw, Kanan said, “I’ll give you that one, Verity. But that’s the only free shot you’re going to get from me.”

Verity’s lips curled back from her teeth in a snarl. She threw the Togruta’s hand off and turned dismissively away. “We shouldn’t keep the Whip waiting,” she said without looking back. “And he’s been wanting this back at the Crucible for a long time now.”

“I’ll kill you,” Kanan said, very softly.

“Subtle, Stray,” Barriss said in a voice too low for the others to hear, grabbing his arm again to propel him forwards. Her voice dropped to barely a whisper as she added, “Almost as subtle as what you did to that kyber crystal shipment.”

*

_Five years ago_

“Did they tell you that the last Jedi they brought here killed himself?”

Kanan kept his eyes closed, but the intrusion had been enough to break him out of his shallow meditative trance. He flattened his palms against his knees, feeling his perception of the Force widen from the narrowness he had been trying to achieve before. He had no particular desire to feel anything else going on in the Crucible, not with so many Inquisitors here, but their presence gnawed at the inside of his head like an ill-fitting shoe.

“So I’ve been informed,” he said. “Repeatedly.”

“There haven’t exactly been many,” Barriss Offee said. “I think you’re only the seventh that I know of. The last one…that was almost two years ago. Since then –” He sensed her shrug. “Order 66 was very effective.”

“I’m aware,” Kanan said, finally opening his eyes. He stared at the battered wall of the cell in front of him; he was kneeling with his back to the open door. Anyone who wanted to come in and stab him in the back – and it had happened before – was welcome to try.

“How did they find you, Caleb?”

Kanan flinched a little at the name, but he still didn’t look back. Instead he stared down at the lightsaber on the floor in front of him, studying the familiar blackened metal hilt as though he had never seen it before. “Bad luck.”

She made an interrogative sound, and something about made him feel like he was eleven again, back on one of the archaic cruisers that the Order had still used for training missions and offworld rituals. The war had taxed the Jedi to the extent that they had had to use senior padawans – and occasionally junior ones – to chaperone events that previously would have been headed by Knights, and Barriss Offee had been the one assigned to his cohort. He still remembered peppering her with questions she had seemed pleased to answer, despite the fact that the other two members of his cohort had looked like they wanted to die rather than listen to his voice any longer.

He bit his lip and said, “My partner’s an ISB agent, the kind that works undercover. I didn’t know – she didn’t know, either. The Inquisition found out somehow; you can guess the rest. And my name’s not Caleb anymore.”

He straightened and scooped up his lightsaber, hooking it onto his belt as he turned to face her. “I’m Kanan now.”

She met his gaze evenly. “Not here you’re not.”

He glanced aside. He had cared so little when he arrived at the Crucible that it had taken him months to realize that none of the trainers ever called any of the trainees by name; of the dozen or so still left alive he was the only one who had picked up a nickname. And a nickname wasn’t the same as earning a name, which involved some process that he didn’t know about yet, but was sure he wouldn’t enjoy whenever it came to that. And he was certain that the Hunter already had something in mind.

In a way he wasn’t surprised that the woman who had betrayed the Order and bombed the Jedi Temple itself was an Inquisitor; the real surprise was that she had survived the fall of the Republic. It was on the tip of his tongue to ask how, but somehow he doubted that she would answer.

Instead, he said carefully, wary of a reprimand, “Why are there so many Inquisitors here? My ma – the Hunter said that it was a Hunt, but he didn’t say what that meant.”

Barriss frowned a little in thought, but it wasn’t aimed at him. “Do you remember Pong Krell, back during the war? I know you were still at the Temple then.”

“He’s the one who killed all his men at the Battle of Umbara,” he said after a moment of thought, digging through his memory for decades-old scandals. Krell had done two years as one of the crèche masters when he had been an infant; his main memory of the big Besalisk was of warmth and laughter. He’d juggled younglings for their amusement, utterly certain that he wouldn’t drop them. And then – the war. “Yeah, I remember him. What does that have to do with anything?”

“Then you know how devastating it can be when a Force-user loses control,” Barriss said. “When they allow themselves to be subsumed by the Force, so that they have no other master but their own desires and their own twisted allegiance to the Force.”

“Sounds like something you would be familiar with.”

She gave him a sharp look, and he glanced aside.

“An Inquisitor who goes rogue has to be put down,” she went down. “Swiftly and with overwhelming force – that’s been proven before. You already know how little Inquisitors care about the lives of innocents; now multiply that a thousandfold. Imagine Krell if he had been unleashed upon civilians, rather than trained soldiers. Crucible protocol is to send every Inquisitor who isn’t currently assigned elsewhere after a rogue, including trainees.”

He swallowed. “Does that happen often?”

Her lip curled. “Inquisitors aren’t exactly the most stable individuals in the galaxy. It’s rarer now than it used to be; the trainers are better at weeding out the ones that will snap once they’re in the field.” She paused, then added with deliberate cruelty, “That’s why most of the other Jedi died.”

He looked away, but a moment later thought, _most of?_

“Barriss,” he said slowly, seeing the way her gaze shot towards him at the sound of her name, “are there other J –”

The words died on his lips as he felt the Force shift, his overstretched nerves always attuned to one other being in the Crucible. Barriss’s gaze sharpened as she noticed his shudder, then she swung around, skirts flaring at the motion, as the Hunter stepped past her into the room. He rested a hand on the back of Kanan’s neck, making Kanan flinch before the Hunter tightened his grip again. He shut his eyes, biting his lip and glad for once that the Hunter’s presence had blanketed everything else in the Force; he didn’t want to know what Barriss’s reaction to this was.

“First,” said the Hunter. “Catching up on old times?”

Kanan opened his eyes just in time to see Barriss’s gaze flicker to him before returning to the Hunter, her brow furrowing a little in thought before it went cold again.

“Hardly,” she said. “He proved more competent than I expected from a trainee. I’ll take him out on this Hunt.”

“That’s generous of you, First,” said the Hunter, his grip tightening enough to make Kanan hiss out pain. He closed his hands into fists at his sides, knowing that there was nothing else he could do unless he wanted to add to his collection of half-healed cuts and bruises. “I assure you, however, that I have the matter well in hand. I believe that in this particular case, it would be very unwise to put you two together, given the nature of our quarry.”

“Doubting my loyalty, Hunter?” said Barriss, her lip curling.

“I would hate to test it on this occasion,” said the Hunter. “It has been some time since you were on one of these Hunts. If you’re so eager to take a trainee out, I’m sure that could be arranged. They’re hardly all spoken for.”

“That won’t be necessary,” Barriss said. She frowned at Kanan and he ducked his head, uneasy under her narrowed gaze. Something pushed its way into the Force despite the dampening effect of the Hunter’s presence, an emotion that he couldn’t identify before she tamped it down again. “You had best hope that you bring that one back alive,” she told the Hunter. “It would be a pity if you had to start over again with a new toy.”

“Oh,” said the Hunter, giving Kanan an affectionate little shake that made his teeth rattle together. “I believe that in this case my Hound shall prove his worth and earn his name.”

This time Kanan couldn’t help his flinch, but he saw Barriss frown again. For a moment he thought she would speak again, then she shook her head. “You can believe that if you want,” she said. “No trainee has ever killed a rogue.”

The Hunter just smiled.

Barriss frowned at them a moment more, but apparently she couldn’t find another excuse to stay. With a lingering look at Kanan – at the Hunter’s hand on Kanan’s neck – she turned and left, her steps soundless on the metal floor.

The Hunter turned Kanan around to face him. Kanan stumbled a little as he did so, feeling utterly numb; it took everything he had not to flinch away as the Hunter trailed a thoughtful hand over his cheek, the line of his jaw, the curve of his lips, staring resolutely over his shoulder at the battered wall behind him.

“Interesting conversation?” he said.

“It had its moments,” Kanan made himself say, squeezing his hands into fists at his sides. In the corridor outside his cell, he heard someone approach, pause as they looked in, and then keep walking. Only one of the other trainers ever interrupted the Hunter when he was with Kanan, and that rarely. Kanan guessed that none of the new Inquisitors would bother coming down to the trainees’ quarters.

The Hunter touched his mouth again, his thumb catching on Kanan’s lower lip. Kanan forced himself to relax, to go limp and keep staring at the wall, because if he did anything else there was a good chance he’d try to bite the Hunter’s fingers off.

“And just what,” the Hunter inquired, “were you speaking of?”

“The weather,” Kanan drawled. “Is there a summer on this world? I bet you could get a hell of a tan.”

The Hunter’s grip tightened suddenly on his jaw, hard enough to make Kanan wince. He stared into Kanan’s eyes for a long moment that seemed to stretch out between them, Kanan’s breath starting to come in harsh pants despite his attempt to keep it steady.

He shouldn’t have said anything. After all these months – however long it had been – he should have known better.

“You should learn,” the Hunter said slowly, “to hold your tongue.” He pressed his thumb against Kanan’s lips, his eyes glinting, and added, “A muzzle will see to that rather permanently.” 

*

_Present day_

The moment the hangar doors slid shut behind Chopper, leaving Kanan alone in the corridor with the five other Inquisitors, Sabine turned to Zeb and said, “We have to go after him.”

Zeb’s face and ears did something complicated that she couldn’t quite interpret, then he tipped his head slightly in the direction of the two stormtroopers still on guard in the hangar. They had put their heads out at the sound of the disturbance in the corridor, seen the cause, and quickly retreated to somewhere safer. As soon as the doors had closed they had returned to their post in front of them and were now watching the four members of the crew warily.

Pulling a blaster on an Inquisitor, let alone on five of them – six if you counted Kanan – was usually grounds for execution, sentence to be carried out immediately. That was a basic fact of Imperial life, even for cadets that had never seen an Inquisitor before. The stormies were probably wondering why Sabine and Zeb were still alive under the circumstances. Sabine might have been wondering that herself if it hadn’t been for the fact that she was pretty sure she already knew the answer.

This time Sabine lowered her voice as she added, “We have to at least see where they’re taking him, and the longer we wait the less chance we’re going to have of figuring that out. Hera’s going to want to know.”

“I don’t disagree,” Zeb said slowly. “But there are our friends over there to think about.”

Sabine glanced at the two stormtroopers, who seemed to be engaged in a whispered conversation of their own. She wondered what they had been told about the ISB team they were watching and came to the conclusion that it probably wasn’t much, if she knew the Empire. It wasn’t a huge fan of telling people anything.

Unexpectedly, Ezra said, “We don’t need to use the door. We go up and over.” He gestured with one hand, his body angled to hide the gesture from the stormtroopers.

Sabine and Zeb followed his pointing finger to the hatch set in the ceiling over the _Ghost_. “The maintenance shafts,” Sabine said, smiling slowly. “Droids and techs use them to get from hangar to hangar without using the main corridors; that will connect to every other hangar on this level. If the Inquisitors are parked around here somewhere, we’ll find them.”

“I’m not sure Shoulders here will be able to take our route,” Ezra said, glancing at Zeb.

“Someone’s got to stay here and distract the bucketheads,” Sabine said. “And wait for Hera.”

Zeb groaned. “Why is it always me?”

“Hey, Chopper will be here too,” Sabine said, which got her a round of irritated beeping. Before anyone else could protest, she caught Ezra by the shoulder and hauled him towards the _Ghost_ , leaving Zeb to walk towards the stormtroopers. As they ducked inside the ship, she heard him say, “Now, who’s up for a friendly game of sabacc?”

The ceiling turned out to be a little too far from the top of the _Ghost_ for Sabine and Ezra to reach it unassisted, but her gauntlets had a fibercord grappler built in, and crouching on top of the ladder that led up to the _Ghost_ ’s top hatch she was able to aim and fire, hitting just to the side of the hatch. Sabine tugged experimentally on the cord, then put her head out of the hatch to make sure that the stormtroopers were still occupied by Zeb. It was the work of a few seconds to haul herself arm over arm up the cord, then reach out to flip the hatch open and swing herself inside. Ezra followed her up, scuttling out of her way so that Sabine could reach out and detach the fibercord from the ceiling, coiling it up and stuffing it into one of her pouches. She would reattach it to her gauntlets later. She swung the hatch closed and clicked on the lamp on her helmet, illuminating the dark, narrow space. At least the maintenance tunnels were meant for fully-grown humans, not just droids, which meant that Sabine could stand up instead of having to crawl.

“So how do you know about these shafts?” Ezra asked after several minutes of walking.

Sabine had been counting in her head, estimating the distance between hangars and trying to remember if the Lothal complex did anything weird. She didn’t think so, since she was pretty sure she would remember if it did; the Empire wasn’t really big on individuality. “I used to be a cadet at the Imperial Academy on Mandalore – the academies are built right into the regular complexes.”

“Yeah, I know; I’ve seen the cadets from this one around the city.”

That made sense, Sabine supposed. “I used to spend a lot of time hiding out in the shafts up here before I ran away,” she said. “They don’t really get used much anymore, so no one bothered me.”

Ezra blinked. “Why did you run away?”

“Long story,” Sabine said.

“So you…became an ISB agent?”

“Long, long story.”

Ezra apparently decided not to press any further, and after a few minutes they reached the next hatch. Sabine motioned Ezra to stay back, crouching down to work it open far enough that she could see out. A moment later she slid it closed again. “Just TIEs. Let’s try the next one.”

“Why do you think that a bunch of other Inquisitors would take Kanan away?” Ezra asked.

“I don’t know,” Sabine said. “That’s what worries me. Kanan’s a good guy…” She let the words trail off, thinking, and then added, “Maybe that’s the problem. The Empire’s not really fond of good guys.”

She found the next hatch and knelt down to find the latch, letting it slide open a bare inch. The sound of voices carried up and Sabine quickly clicked her helmet light off, motioning Ezra over as she slid the hatch a little further open.

The Inquisitors had just entered the hangar, marching Kanan in the direction of the unfamiliar starship parked there. Sabine knew Kanan well enough to see the moment that he hesitated, forcing the veiled woman to thrust him forwards.

The helmeted Mirialan turned towards him. Sabine couldn’t see her expression from here, but there was a gloating note in her voice as she spoke, “Scared, Hound?”

Kanan bared his teeth at her. “If you think I’m afraid of the Crucible, you don’t know me as well as you think you do.”

She patted his cheek with one gloved hand. “Try it on someone else. I was one of your trainers; I know you better than that.”

“You don’t scare me either,” Kanan said, his voice cold.

The Mirialan laughed, then reached behind herself and pulled a pair of binders off her belt. She held them up in front of Kanan, letting them dangle by one finger. “Going to keep cooperating or is this going to get fun?”

Kanan sighed. The woman in the veil reached out with her free hand to snatch the binders from the Mirialan, making the other woman hiss in warning. The veiled Inquisitor ignored her, pulling both of Kanan’s arms behind his back and snapping the binders over his wrists.

Kanan grimaced but didn’t protest, and somehow that was more disturbing than anything else Sabine had seen so far. She clenched her fists on the side of the hatch, her fingers itching for her blasters, but she had seen Kanan in action, and she knew that if the other Inquisitors were half as good as he was then she wouldn’t stand a chance. She’d probably be dead before she fired her second shot.

Ezra opened his mouth to say something, thought better of it, and pressed his lips together in a thin line. Sabine suspected that she knew what was going through his head right now, because it was the same thought that she couldn’t stop turning over: _why isn’t he fighting them?_

She already knew the answer to that, too. _Because of us._

Kanan took one step towards the ship, still held by the veiled woman, and was stopped by the big male nonhuman. Kanan tipped his head back and bared his teeth again, like he was the hound that the Mirialan had named him. “What, Hangman? You want your shot too?”

“I think I liked you better when you couldn’t talk,” the other Inquisitor said.

Kanan was still glaring when his fist lashed out suddenly. The punch took Kanan cleanly in the jaw, knocking him back into the veiled Inquisitor.

Sabine couldn’t help her gasp, making two of the other Inquisitors glance up. She slid the hatch closed immediately, reaching for one of her blasters; Ezra’s hand had been on his energy slingshot the entire time and now he drew it back. Sabine raised a hand to still him, her whole body tense as she stared at the hatch and counted off heartbeats. When she reached twenty and nothing had happened, she slid the hatch cautiously open again.

Kanan was unconscious. The Inquisitor that he had named the Hangman picked him up and slung him over his shoulder as easily as he might have a sack of jogans. He carried Kanan into the belly of the ship, the other Inquisitors following him. Only the woman in the veil paused at the foot of the ramp, glancing up in the direction of the hatch. Sabine held her breath, not moving and hoping that Ezra would do the same; after a moment the woman looked down and went into the ship. The ramp closed up after her, the ship’s engines humming to life. Sabine slid the hatch shut as it started to lift off, clicking her helmet lamp back on.

She and Ezra stared at each other.

“Okay,” Ezra said, “I realize I’m new here, but that’s not good, right?”

“No,” Sabine said. “That’s not good.”

They were both silent on their way back to the _Ghost_. When Sabine slid the hatch open in their hangar, she found that the stormtroopers were gone and the ship’s top hatch had been left open; this time she just jumped down, landing lightly on top of the ship. Ezra followed a moment later, swinging the ship’s hatch closed behind him as they both clambered down the ladder.

Hera was in the lounge with Zeb and Chopper, sitting with her head in her hands and her lekku slumping over her shoulders. Chopper was patting her knee with one of his arms, his warble the softest that Sabine had ever heard.

“Hera?” Sabine asked.

She raised her head, her eyes swollen; she looked like she had been weeping. “Is he alive?”

“What?”

“ _Is he alive_?”

“Yeah,” Sabine said quickly. “Yeah, he’s alive. Hera, what happened? Where are they taking him?”

Hera ran a hand over her face. Her voice was barely a whisper as she said, “Back to the Crucible, to the Inquisition headquarters on Mustafar.”

“What about us?”

“We’re ordered back to Naboo,” Hera said. “This team is being reevaluated. We’re removed from duty immediately, pending investigation.” She rubbed her hands over her face again. “That’s why they took Kanan.”

Sabine exchanged a look with Zeb, who looked grim; apparently this information wasn’t new to him. Carefully, Sabine said, “What are we going to do?”

Hera didn’t look at her. “We’re going to go back to Naboo,” she said, her voice utterly without inflection. “We’re going to follow our orders.”

*

For a long time after the _Ghost_ left Lothal and jumped to hyperspace, Hera sat alone in the cockpit and stared unseeing out the viewport. She wanted very badly for this all to be a dream, but she knew that it couldn’t be because this wasn’t the first time this had happened. It wasn’t the first time that she had seen Kanan taken away from her in an instant, her entire world crumbling around her in his absence. When Lord Vader and the Hunter had taken him away the last time –

She hadn’t known if he would come back. They had told her that he would if he was found suitable, but the months of his absence had dragged on and on and _on_ , and all there had been from the Crucible had been silence. By the time the order to come to Mustafar had finally arrived, Hera had been more than half-convinced that he had died there.

Part of him had, Hera had realized almost immediately. The Kanan who had left her on Naboo hadn’t been the Kanan whom Mustafar had handed back to her. Six weeks before he could touch her without flinching. Ten before he could consistently form full sentences. Three months before they had been able to sleep in the same bed again. Longer before he could kiss her.

That had been the first time. There wouldn’t be a second.

Hera ran a hand over her face, bowing her head. She didn’t know how long they had been in hyperspace, but it was a long way from Lothal to Naboo. She didn’t have to worry about getting there any time soon.

Whatever that would mean. Hera knew the Empire too well to assume that this was anything like a routine evaluation, not after what had happened. Agent Beneke had always protected her from the brunt of ISB politics, but she knew that there had been arguments about her suitability going on behind the scenes; it was the main reason she had spent the year Kanan had been at the Crucible on Naboo. With him dead – with him dead at the hands of her _father_ , of all people –

Hera didn’t know what that meant, but she could guess. And Sabine had been right. There was her team to consider now; it wasn’t just her and Kanan and Chopper. Her team had always been a gamble on the Bureau’s part; it would be easy for the Bureau to disavow them. Or worse. Hera just didn’t know.

It too more effort than Hera expected, but she finally pushed herself upright, stiff in every muscle and her entire body sore, as though she had been crying for hours. She hadn’t been, though. She didn’t think that she had shed a single tear since what had happened with the fleet. She wouldn’t cry for Kanan, not yet. Not until she knew there was something to weep for.

The murmur of voices from the direction of the lounge stopped as the cockpit door slid open. Hera ignored it and retreated to her cabin, locking the door behind her. She stood looking at her comm station for what felt like a long time, then finally punched in the frequency she wanted and stood back.

A little to her surprise, Agent Markus Anjali’s hologram appeared immediately. Hera thought that he must have been expecting someone else, because his eyebrows went up as he recognized her, but he smiled anyway. _“Syndulla! How are you? I heard you were still out on the Rim with that dangerous boy of yours.”_

Hera couldn’t make herself return his smile. “I’m on my way back to Naboo, actually.” She took a deep breath, considering Markus. He was one of the few people in the ISB she was actually on casual speaking terms with; they had worked together on a big joint operation on Felucia four years ago. Kanan had saved his life. If nothing else, Markus owed her a favor for that, though Hera hoped she wouldn’t have to call on it.

_“Oh,”_ Markus said, with a sudden sideways glance. _“I heard about Agent Beneke. I’m sorry; I know he was your handler.”_

“That’s not why I was ordered back,” Hera said. “Or at least I don’t think it is.” She took another breath. “Markus – do you know why –”

He hesitated, chewing on his lip, and finally said, _“Yeah, Hera, I know why. Or at least there’s a rumor going around – the stormies on the gate talked. And you know how the cleaning droids around here are. They’re the ones who found Agent Beneke.”_

Hera rubbed at her forehead. “Why is my team being called in, Markus?”

_“I don’t know anything about your team,”_ he said slowly, pausing over each word, _“but the rumor is that they’re going to pull you out of the field for good. There’s some project – Nimbus? Nemesis? – that’s being reevaluated that you’re a part of, I guess. I don’t know anything about that, though. Rumor is Kallus raised holy hell.”_

“He would,” Hera said quietly.

_“And there’s something about charges being brought?”_ He frowned again. _“But it’s you. That’d be like calling charges on Lord Vader or something.”_

“I’m not Lord Vader,” Hera reminded him.

_“Well, obviously.”_ He hesitated. _“I think you might be in a lot of trouble, Hera. What did you_ do _?”_

“Nothing,” Hera said. She let out her breath and added more slowly, “Yet.”

_“What does that mean?”_

“Thank you for telling me, Markus,” Hera said, and shut off the holoprojector. She leaned against the comm station for a moment, feeling the weight of the galaxy settling on her. Then she straightened up and let her breath out, turning towards the door.

It was only a few quick steps across the corridor to Kanan’s cabin. Hera crossed the small room – neat now, instead of the mess it had been a few days ago – and sank to her knees in front of the bunk, finding the drawer beneath it. It rattled as it slid open and Hera sat back on her heels, staring down at its contents.

If Kanan was aware that she knew about this, he had never mentioned it. She had found it when he had been on Mustafar the first time, during those months when she had been furious at him, at his secrets, at his lies. Maybe she should have turned it in to her handler, but Beneke hadn’t known about Kanan then either, and she had wanted – she had wanted something that was still her own, even in the face of the huge betrayal that Kanan’s secret had been.

Hera looked at the drawer for a long time before she finally reached for what was inside it. This, she knew, there would be no coming back from.

*

Ezra watched from the entrance to his cabin as Hera emerged from Kanan’s room and returned to the cockpit. She was holding something against her, but from this angle he couldn’t see what it was.

He waited until the door was locked before he stepped out into the hallway and crossed to Kanan’s cabin. Ezra hesitated for a moment, then touched the control pad, wondering if Hera had left it unlocked.

She hadn’t, but Ezra knew how to deal with a locked door. He cast a wary look at the entrance to the lounge, but both Sabine and Zeb had been pretty distracted when he had left, and he had a feeling that they weren’t going to come out any time soon. He found his picklock – actually the manipulator from a broken astromech – and set to work on the lock, grinning when the door slid open.

He let the door close behind him as he stepped inside, finding the light. Kanan’s room was neat; the only sign that it was lived in was the green shirt forgotten on the big cushion against one wall. Poking around only got him more clothes, some weapons, and a tool set, nothing interesting or fun at all. It wasn’t exactly what Ezra had been hoping an Inquisitor’s room would look like, and he sank down onto the bunk, bored already and feeling like he had intruded.

It took him a moment to realize something was humming.

Ezra straightened up to his feet, looking around the room. It wasn’t _quite_ a hum; it was some kind of high-pitched resonance he couldn’t quite put a name to. After a moment of concentration, he realized that he wasn’t even sure whether or not he was actually _hearing_ it – not with his ears, anyway.

“Okay,” he said out loud. “Weird.”

The sound – or whatever it was – seemed to be coming from beneath the bed. Ezra already knew that there were drawers there; he’d gone through Zeb’s earlier, which had mostly just contained porn. Somehow he didn’t think that that was what he was going to find here. He crouched down in front of the bed and found the catch, watching the small drawer slide open.

There was only one thing inside, a pretty gold-colored cube with what looked like blue glass inserts and fine etching on the corners. Ezra turned it over in his hands, curious and trying to decide if it was something other than just an objet d’art. It was the kind of thing that would go for a lot of creds on the black market, anyway, but he wasn’t doing that anymore. Well, he wasn’t doing it at the moment, at least.

He was about to put it back and declare Kanan’s cabin a lost cause when it hummed curiously in his hand.

Ezra was so startled that he dropped it and almost fell backwards, catching himself before he hit his head and staring at the thing. He had dropped it – he had _definitely_ let go of it – but it hadn’t fallen. Instead it was hovering in mid-air a few centimeters off the floor, the corners turning one at a time.

And Ezra could _feel_ it, a – a _presence_ , that was the only word he could think of to describe it. A presence like that of a living thing, murmuring a wordless question in his head. He could tell that it was a question, but he couldn’t tell what it was asking or what it meant by that, so all he did was stare at it.

The last of its corners turned and the thing lifted further up off the floor, the corners spreading out from what was left of the interior. Ezra stared at it, wide-eyed, and almost jumped out of his own skin as a hologram suddenly sprang up in front of him. It was a bearded man in a long cloak, his arms folded in front of him, and Ezra’s first thought was that he looked terribly, terribly sad.

_“This is Master Obi-Wan Kenobi. I regret to report that both our Jedi Order and the Republic have fallen, with the dark shadow of the Empire rising to take their place. This message is a warning and a reminder for any surviving Jedi: trust in the Force.”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As ever, much love and grateful thanks to my wonderful beta Xena, who patiently puts up with what is probably a frankly alarming amount of my nonsense.
> 
> I do daily progress reports over on Tumblr, under the tag "[daily fic snippet](http://bedlamsbard.tumblr.com/tagged/daily%20fic%20snippet)," if you want to keep track of what I'm working on or get a hint of what's happening in the next few chapters. (I'm usually writing three chapters ahead of the last posted chapter.)


	18. Ghost

_Five years ago_  
_Naboo, Mid Rim_

_Kanan is a Jedi._

It was the only thing that Hera could think about, the words running through her head as she stared unseeing at the door Lord Vader and the Pau’an Inquisitor had taken Kanan through.

_Kanan is a_ Jedi.

She didn’t know how long she had been standing here, how long it had been since they had gone. Since they had taken Kanan and left her here all alone.

Kanan _is a Jedi._

He couldn’t be. He couldn’t. Even now – he _couldn’t_. Hera would have known. They had been together for a year now, she would have _known_ , she was certain of it. She knew that Kanan kept secrets – he had never spoken of his past besides that oblique _the Empire killed my people_ months ago – but this was more than a secret, this was – this was – this was as though she had tried to lie about being a Twi’lek. They had taught her that in the Imperial Academy. Jedi was what you were forever.

Hera pressed her trembling hands to her face, staring at the door as though by doing so she could will it to open, to bring Kanan back inside – back to her. All she could see, over and over again, was Kanan on his knees, the Inquisitor’s gloved hand dragging his head back to look up at Lord Vader.

She could only remember what had happened in frozen, out of order slices of time – the sound Kanan had made when he had hit the floor after Lord Vader had dropped him, an invisible hand holding her in place when she had tried to run to him, her blaster flying out of its holster into Kanan’s hand –

Lord Vader’s lightsaber at his throat.

_Jedi_ , said the part of her that was an Imperial officer. _Traitor. Liar. Enemy._ The part of her that was nineteen years old and in love screamed, _but they_ took _him and he never did anything! He never did anything to them!_

She had been so convinced that Lord Vader was going to make her watch him die.

Hera was still standing there, staring at the door, which led out onto a small landing platform where Lord Vader’s shuttle had been docked, when she heard the interior door behind her slide open. Hera flinched, her breath catching with sudden hope that it was somehow Kanan on his way back, but when she turned – too quickly, stumbling for an instant as her heel caught on the floor – she saw that it was Agent Beneke. All she could do was stare at him in disappointment, that last small hope trickling away. If Agent Beneke was here, then it couldn’t have been a mistake after all, no matter how dearly she wished it.

He looked around the empty room and nodded in a satisfied sort of way. “Good, your distraction is gone. Lord Vader said that he would see to that.”

Hera blinked at him. “My…distraction?” she said. She felt hollow and wrung out, and the words dragged at her like weights.

Beneke crossed to her, laying a hand on her shoulder. Hera hadn’t seen him in person for almost half a year, not since the disastrous meeting on Zardossa Stix when Kanan – when she had told Kanan what she was, and Kanan had nearly left her over it. It was a shock to realize that she and Beneke were the same height now.

“I know that you were very fond of that boy, Hera,” he said, his voice gentle. “You must be upset, and that’s entirely understandable under the circumstances. No one faults you for that. But you’re a smart girl. You must understand that what was done was done for the best.”

“They –” _Took him_ , she meant to say, but she couldn’t force the words out. Saying it out loud would make it real, would make Kanan’s absence permanent. _No, they’re going to give him back, they said they would._ They had to.

“Hera, you’re a very smart girl, a very good agent,” Beneke said, and she dragged her attention back to him with an effort. She had heard the shuttle lift off after they had left. Kanan was already long gone, and – and he wasn’t coming back. Not today. Not now.

“Your dalliance was permitted to continue because you never allowed it to affect your work,” Agent Beneke went on. “There was doubt about that – you are very young, after all – but until recently my superiors agreed that the benefits of this boy’s work with you outweighed the risks.”

“You used him,” Hera whispered. “The assignments you gave me – gave us – were for two agents, not just – and for a human and a Twi’lek. Not just me.” She couldn’t remember when the change had come, if it had been gradual or abrupt. She had taken it as a good sign once she had realized what the ISB was doing. Bringing Kanan along with her from Gorse had been the single most rebellious act of her life, and for so long afterwards she had lived with the fear that she had acted out of pure emotion, out of desire, despite the fact that he hadn’t touched her until that night on Pantora and that he more than pulled his weight on the _Ghost_.

Beneke’s grip tightened on her shoulder, forcing Hera to look at him. “Of course we used him,” he said. “He was an asset, and an asset must be used. We were always very satisfied with his work, even if his methods were sometimes a bit…irregular. But even an otherwise satisfactory asset can outlive its usefulness.”

“Kanan didn’t – he wasn’t –” She couldn’t think through the words, looking towards the door again. He was gone, though. Lord Vader and the Pau’an Inquisitor had taken him away.

_But he’ll come back. They’ll give him back._

They had to give him back.

_Your only value to the Empire is what you can do for it._ Hera had always found the words comforting in the past. The Empire didn’t care about where she had come from or who her father was; all it cared about was that she could do her duty. And Hera Syndulla had always been able to do her duty. Even when she had had nothing else, she had had that.

But Kanan had been serving the Empire too, had been since Gorse, and it had turned on him –

“He was a liability, Hera,” Agent Beneke said, his voice growing sharper for an instant before it smoothed out again. “And a distraction. You’re a very good agent, Hera, and I know better than anyone else just how hard you’ve worked since you entered the Academy. You’ve always striven to serve your Emperor well, even in the face of your particular difficulty.”

“Kanan wasn’t a difficulty,” Hera said, numb. She wanted Beneke to go away, she wanted to be back in the safe confines of the _Ghost_ , she wanted Kanan back. _If I had run away with him when he asked –_

“I’m not talking about that boy.” Beneke took both her shoulders in her hands, making Hera look up at him. “Hera, I’ve known you since you were still at the Spire. I know how hard you’ve worked to get where you are despite the odds stacked against you – because of the odds stacked against you. I know it can’t be easy to be an alien in the service.”

Hera flinched despite herself. Three years in the Academy on Serenno and another year at the ISB Academy here on Naboo should have inured her to the casual slur, but she had gotten out of the habit of hearing it over the past year. Only humans called other beings aliens. The places she and Kanan had been – it wasn’t a word that was used very often, if at all.

Beneke took her flinch as evidence of something else. “Especially with your background, Hera,” he went on. “Who your father is –”

Hera raised her head. “What does my father have to do with anything?” she managed to say, because at least this was old, familiar territory she could have trodden in her sleep. “No one has heard anything about him in years. He might be dead. What does he matter?”

“What he did hasn’t been forgotten,” Beneke reminded her. “It may not be common knowledge that you’re Cham Syndulla’s daughter, but it’s well known in the higher levels of the Bureau. You know we had to fight to get you into the Academy, Hera. You wouldn’t have been accepted there without your patron putting a word in for you. When you were accepted for Bureau training, all those questions came up again.”

“My father is a traitor and a terrorist,” Hera spat. “I’m nothing like him. You know that. Everybody knows that. I wouldn’t be here if I had anything in common with him besides a name and a species.”

“I do know that, Hera,” Beneke said. “I know where your allegiance lies. But most people in the Bureau don’t know you as well as I do. When they look at you, all they see is a gamble – not the loyal daughter of the Empire whom I know you are. You used to understand how precarious your position is.”

“I’ve never failed to complete an assignment!”

“Of course not, Hera,” Beneke said, still in that awful, soothing voice. Hera couldn’t remember if it had ever been comforting to hear. “You were trained far better than that, and it’s a credit to your training that despite your distractions you always carried your assignments out to the best of your ability.”

He squeezed her shoulder before finally releasing her. “I think we forget sometimes how young you are, Hera. You’ve always been more mature than your peers; perhaps we put you into the field too soon. Normally an agent your age would be part of a team, not alone in the field.”

“I wasn’t alone,” Hera started to explain. “I had Chopper, and Ka –”

Agent Beneke went on as though she hadn’t spoken. “I suppose we forgot to account for your species,” he said. “We’ve allowed you to be very sheltered – I understand that you never partook of the entertainments that many other cadets and agents did? Perhaps I should have encouraged it more,” he added delicately. “I understand that Twi’lek females have certain physical needs –”

Hera stared at him, too appalled to speak.

“It’s perfectly understandable that you were distracted by a pretty face, especially one with that boy’s, er, talents.”

“His tal –” Hera was still thinking of the way her blaster had flown out of her holster and into Kanan’s hand without being touched. It took her a moment to realize that that wasn’t what Agent Beneke was talking about.

He went on before she could muster up a response. “That you’re upset right now is understandable, Hera,” he said. “You cared for the boy. That’s natural, especially considering your age and species. But it will be much better for you if you put him out of your mind and move on.”

“But –” Hera began, and then finally, _finally_ realized what he was saying – and what he wasn’t saying. He thought that Kanan was dead, that Lord Vader had killed him. He hadn’t said anything about Kanan being a Jedi, let alone being taken away to train as an Inquisitor.

He didn’t know that Kanan was still alive.

It was the first time in years that Hera had ever known anything that Beneke didn’t, and the realization took her completely by surprise. She had spent the last five years thinking that he knew everything, because he had, or at least it had always seemed that way. But he didn’t know _this_.

Kanan might have lied to her about everything, but he was hers, he was still hers, and Beneke didn’t know anything about him. Kanan was the only thing Hera had ever had that hadn’t been someone else’s first.

She managed to conceal her reaction before Beneke noticed it, or at least she thought that she did. He was watching her with sharp brown eyes, narrowed a little as though he was wondering why she had cut herself off.

Hera swallowed. She knew that Beneke liked it when she acknowledged that he had been right all along, but there was something that she had to know, and there was no way to find it out aside from asking him.

“Is that why you told us to come in?” she said. “Did you send for Lord Vader to – to –”

_Kill him_ , she meant to finish, but she couldn’t say the words, even if she knew that they hadn’t been carried out. If Beneke had known that Kanan was a Jedi, she thought that he would have told her, but if he hadn’t known, then why had Lord Vader been here? Everyone in the Bureau knew that Force users were the purview of the Inquisition; all field agents were under standing orders to call in an Inquisitor if they found one. Especially if that Force user was a Jedi.

Beneke frowned briefly. “You were called in to be briefed on a joint operation,” he said, his expression clearing. “The – other matter – was going to be handled internally. But Lord Vader is your patron, so his interest is natural.”

He didn’t know. Hera had no idea how Lord Vader had guessed that Kanan was a Jedi, but Beneke hadn’t known.

Beneke squeezed her arm in an encouraging sort of way. “I know that you’re grieving, Hera,” he said. “That’s natural. But there will be other men – or women, if you prefer. You’ve always been very bright, very clear-sighted. I know it doesn’t feel like it right now, but you will move past this. You know better than anyone the dangers of dwelling on the past.”

_It’s not the past,_ Hera reminded herself as he steered her gently in the direction of the door. _He’s coming back. Kanan’s coming back._

Agent Beneke didn’t have to know about that. It was her secret to keep.

*

_Present day_

Hera kept opening the cockpit door, taking a few steps in the direction of the lounge, and then turning back. It was all so much, and if she did that – if she took that final step – then it would all be over. Everything would be over.

The worst thing was that it wasn’t even the first time. The first time –

She had been nineteen years and barely a year out of the Academy when the order had come in to bring her asset back to Naboo. Hera had known that Agent Beneke had never approved of Kanan, but he had been consistently performing excellently in the field and the director had gone over Beneke’s head to keep him there. Finally bringing Kanan to Naboo had seemed like a sign of good things to come, a sign that they would both be able to work with the rest of the ISB instead of being out on the Rim on their own. Instead it had been a nightmare.

Even Beneke hadn’t been aware that the Inquisition had been watching the _Ghost_ for who knew how long. Hera wasn’t certain that anyone at the ISB had known, since afterwards she had discovered that they had been brought in for what had been meant to be a big inter-agency operation. They had just been ordered to report to one of the ISB buildings in the Naboo Imperial Complex, and when they had reached it there hadn’t been any other ISB agents there. The only beings there had been Darth Vader and the Pau’an Inquisitor.

After that everything had happened very fast.

When Kanan had come back – when he had come back, he had still been breathing, but some part of him had died on Mustafar. And if he went there again, Hera knew that she would lose the rest of him. He wouldn’t come back a second time, not whole, not sane.

But if she did this –

She pressed Kanan’s lightsaber hilt to her chest, staring unseeing out into hyperspace. They would arrive at Naboo sooner rather than later; she had to make her decision. Whatever it was, she wouldn’t be able to come back from it.

“Hera?”

She turned as the door slid open behind her, clutching the lightsaber to herself, but it was just Zeb. He gave the lightsaber a slightly confused look, but his voice was gentle when he said, “The door keeps opening and shutting. The kids are starting to worry.”

“Oh,” Hera said. “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize you could hear that.”

“It’s not just the kids,” Zeb said. He put a hand on her shoulder, steering her over to one of the jump seats; Hera sank down into the nearest one and he took the other, leaning forward with concern in his eyes. “Are you all right?”

“Am I – no,” Hera said, and managed a choked little laugh. “No, I’m not all right.” She lowered the lightsaber to her knees, smoothing her fingers over the hilt.

Zeb glanced at it again. “That’s not Kanan’s.”

“It’s complicated,” Hera said. She looked at the lightsaber, biting her lip, and admitted, “I’m thinking about doing something rash.”

“About Kanan?”

“About all of us.” She traced one of the lines on the hilt, not meeting his eyes as she said, “I contacted someone I know at ISB HQ, and he confirmed what I was afraid of – that this team is being decommissioned. I don’t know what that means for us – for me, for you, for Sabine. Ezra. You and Sabine are very good at what you do, maybe they’ll put you on a different team.”

“No,” Zeb said immediately, and as Hera raised her gaze to him he shook his head. “Sabine’ll say the same thing. You know that the only reason either of us is here is because of you and Kanan. Otherwise we’d both be where you found us. Or dead.”

Hera didn’t know what to say to that, so she didn’t say anything.

“What about you?” Zeb asked. “Don’t tell me Agent Kallus is getting his way –”

“Markus – my contact – didn’t know,” Hera said. “Apparently there’s a rumor about charges being brought, but they won’t stick. I’m nearly certain they won’t. But with Beneke dead –” She clasped her hands together under her chin, the lightsaber a hard weight between her palms. A moment later she realized that was suicidally stupid and dropped the lightsaber back to her knees, resting her hands on it.

Zeb was still watching her, his ears gone flat. “You know what you’re going to do, don’t you?” he said.

Hera shut her eyes, letting her breath out slowly. _Ten years of my life and this is where it gets me. I should have run away with Kanan six years ago when he asked._ She opened her eyes and met Zeb’s gaze. “Yes,” she said. “Get the others, please.”

She was back in the pilot’s seat by the time the rest of the crew came in, Kanan’s lightsaber tucked away inside the carrying case for a riflescope she had clipped to her belt. Ezra took Kanan’s chair with a faintly self-conscious expression, his feet dangling over the deck as he hoisted himself up into it. Sabine and Zeb, maybe grasping the gravity of the situation, both looked solemn, their gazes fixed on Hera.

For a long, horrifying moment, she didn’t know what to say. _Stars help me, I swore an oath._ An oath that was supposed to be more important than anything, than anyone, but this time Hera knew that she couldn’t live with herself if she kept it.

“Hera?” Sabine asked when she didn’t say anything. “Is everything all right? Zeb said you wanted to talk to us.”

Hera swiped her tongue nervously over her lips. “Yes. I – I talked to someone I know at ISB HQ, someone who owes me a favor, and he told me that when we reach Naboo this team is going to be decommissioned. We’re all going to be on unpaid leave while we’re investigated for possible crimes against the Empire.”

“ _What?_ ” Sabine said, almost jumping out of her chair. “We didn’t – Hera, I told you! I told you something like this would happen!”

“I know!” Hera said, raising her hands. “I know. You don’t have to give me an ‘I told you so.’”

Zeb, his gaze still fixed on Hera, reached up and drew Sabine back down with his hand on her wrist. “You just gonna take that lying down, Hera?” he asked.

Hera looked down, letting her breath out. _Do this and there’s no coming back_ , she thought, but even that wasn’t true. It had been too late for a long time now. She raised her head and said, “I want to go after Kanan.”

*

Kanan woke up with a pounding headache, a throbbing jaw, and Patience crouched in front of him, staring intently at his face. He jerked in surprise, but managed not to do anything as embarrassing as cry out or try to use the Force on her.

“Oh, good,” she said. “You’re awake. I was starting to worry the Hangman might have hit you too hard. He does that, you know.”

“Yeah, I remember,” Kanan said shortly, taking rapid stock of his surroundings. He was in a cell on the _Nex_ , one of the small starships the Inquisition occasionally used for retrievals; Kanan hadn’t set foot on one since he had been a trainee. He was also in binders and a shock collar, neither of which at this point came as any surprise.

He folded himself carefully into a more comfortable position, keeping his gaze on Patience as he did so. One of her droids was perched on her shoulder; the others were hovering on either side of him, presumably to slow him down if he went for her. The idea was tempting, and for a moment Kanan gave it serious thought before deciding it would probably do him more harm than good. He wasn’t sure that he was willing to take that irreversible a step just yet.

He lifted his manacled hands and said, “You know this is all unnecessary, right?”

“Oh, I’m sure I could think of some other ways to keep you from doing anything…interesting,” Patience said, a smirk lingering around her lips. “The Hunter used to be so possessive, but he’s not here now.”

“Yeah,” Kanan said, baring his teeth a little. “He’s not here now. And he was the only one I listened to, too.”

For a moment Patience looked faintly uneasy, but before she could respond the door to the cell slid open. “Get out,” the First Inquisitor said.

Patience pushed to her feet and turned to face her. The two Mirialan women stared at each other; Kanan turned his head slightly to one side, biting his lip at the clash of wills in the Force before Patience finally broke the staring contest with a hiss. The First stepped aside so that she could stalk out of the cell, her droids following her.

“What,” Kanan said as the door slid shut, “you want your shot at me too?”

Barriss unhooked her veil to reveal her face and came over to sit down across from him, smoothing her split overskirts down as she folded her legs in front of her. “Do you have any idea how much trouble you’re in, Caleb?”

Kanan lifted his hands so that she could see the binders, though it wasn’t as though she didn’t know they were there. “I can guess, but I’m not exactly sure why I’m here. I’ve done everything I’ve ever been ordered to do, no matter how despicable –”

“Not everything,” Barriss said.

He felt his heart drop. _The kyber crystal_ , he thought, suddenly weary. _And my blasted useless wild talent._ He had seen the crystal’s shatterpoint the moment he had calmed down enough to start really _looking_ at the thing, but he still had no conscious memory of creating a flaw in it. He must have done so, though. It was the only thing that made sense. He said, “Whatever the Inquisition thinks, they can’t prove anything.”

“We know you tried to make a suicide run at an Imperial star destroyer,” Barriss said flatly.

“Oh,” Kanan said. “That. I forgot.”

“Only _you_ could forget committing treason, Stray,” she said, shaking her head. “Sometimes I wonder what the Hunter ever saw in you. He never took another pet, you know.”

Kanan knew. He looked down, trying to force his fists to unclench, then gave up on that and lifted his gaze again. There was one question that he needed an answer to, and he had the feeling that this would be his only chance to get it. “How did he die?”

Barriss hesitated, long enough that Kanan felt his shoulders tense, his whole body so stiff he was afraid he would shatter like glass if anyone touched him. Finally she said, “Who told you?”

“The Whip,” Kanan said. “Back when we were still on Thyferra. He didn’t give me any details, though, and I wasn’t going to ask.” He hesitated, but Barriss was the only Inquisitor he trusted to tell him the truth. “Is he really dead? This isn’t a trick?”

Her face softened a little. “He really is dead. I saw the body.”

Kanan couldn’t help his gasping sob, bending his head and raising his hands to his face in an attempt to hide his expression. He hadn’t realized that even though he had heard about the Hunter’s death weeks ago, it hadn’t felt real until now.

He felt a flutter of sympathy in the Force, then Barriss leaned forward and brushed her fingers across his knee in something that was the closest thing to comfort he had seen her show since the Republic had still stood. “He is dead,” she repeated.

Kanan pressed a hand to his eyes, unwilling to look at her. “How?”

“Another Jedi. She walked into the Stygeon Prime trap.” She drew her hand back, smoothing down the folds of her skirts again.

“Another?” Kanan said dully. “You know I’m no more a Jedi than you are.”

“I think we both know who I’m talking about, Caleb. I read your report about what happened on Lothal on Empire Day.”

He raised his gaze to her slowly, his hands closing into fists before he opened them again, smoothing his palms over his knees. Barriss met his eyes and for a long moment they just stared at each other, the name neither of them was willing to say hanging in the air between them. Finally, Kanan said, “That’s not my name.”

Her shoulders slumped. It was always difficult for him to sense anything of her in the Force, but he thought that for just an instant he felt something that might have been relief from her. A moment later she looked up again, folding her hands in her lap with careful precision as she tilted her head at him. “Haven’t you ever wondered why the other Inquisitors still call you ‘the Jedi’ half the time, even though you earned your name years ago? They don’t call me that. They never did any of the others, when there were still others.”

Kanan raised an eyebrow at the change of subject, but all he said was, “I’ve always gone with the obvious answer. They hate me.”

“They don’t hate you,” Barriss said, then allowed, “Well, most of them don’t. There are exceptions.” Her fingers flexed against each other; she glanced down at her hands as if surprised by this display of emotion. “I know you’ve never been able to tell which Inquisitors used to be Jedi and which were found elsewhere. Not even the Hunter, even after all that time. But you…they can all sense it. Most of them have never met another Jedi before; most of them never will. They don’t know what they’re sensing when they feel you in the Force, but they know it’s not something like them.”

“Something like what?” Kanan said tiredly.

“Something of the dark side,” Barriss said. A muscle in her jaw twitched, then she tilted her head slightly to one side and regarded him like a curious raptor. “They can sense that part of you, the part that matters, is and always will be a Jedi.”

Kanan shook his head. “Yeah, right.”

“You know it in your heart, Caleb,” Barriss said. “You know it and I know it and the Whip knows it – the Hunter knew it too when he still lived. And they’ll use it against you in your trials. You know that. There’s nothing you can do about it. Not now. It’s too late for you.”

“Then why are you telling me this?” Kanan asked. “If it’s too late for me – if I’m going to die in the trials – then why are you even bothering to tell me?”

She blinked. “I –”

“Yeah,” Kanan said, closing his eyes and tilting his head back against the wall. “I thought so.” He rubbed a hand over his face, then looked at her again. “I know that we’ve both fallen far from grace, First. And I think the Order wouldn’t have us anymore, even if we were the last options in the galaxy.”

Her jaw twitched again. “The Jedi Order is long in its grave. For its sins.”

“But we bear its mark on our souls,” Kanan said. “And you do, you know.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Feel like a Jedi in the Force.” He raised an eyebrow as she went absolutely still. “And you know that too, Barriss. You’ve always known it.”

She rose abruptly, smoothing her skirts down with quick, nervous motions. “The Jedi Order is dead, Caleb. The sooner you embrace that the better.”

Kanan pushed himself to his feet, and she raised her head towards him, a flash of irritation in her eyes that she had to look so far up. “You think I don’t know the Order is dead?” he said. “I was still in the Order when it was murdered, unlike one of us here.”

“Then it’s a pity you can’t remember what happens to Jedi in the Empire, Stray,” Barriss snapped. “Because I promise you that no one in the Crucible has forgotten. And if you can’t keep your mouth shut the way your master tried to teach you, then they’ll be very pleased to have a live Jedi to play with after all these years.”

Kanan felt a muscle in his jaw jump. “You have no idea what the Hunter taught me,” he said through clenched teeth.

“Then I would try and remember whatever it was,” Barriss said. “It won’t be Depa Billaba’s student who survives on Mustafar, but it might be the Hunter’s.”

Kanan’s jaw clenched, but there was nothing he could say to that. At his silence, Barriss turned to go, her step soundless on the metal deck. Only when she had reached the door did she pause and look back at him, her hand hovering just over the control. “You know, most of the Inquisition thought that you would be the one to kill the Hunter.”

Kanan shut his eyes, forcing himself to think about it, to really _think_. “I don’t think I could have,” he said, opening his eyes again but not looking at her. “I might have wanted him dead more than almost anything else in the galaxy, but I don’t think I could have done it. Not after –” He gritted his teeth and finished very quietly, “He spent a lot of time on me.”

“I know what the Hunter did to you –”

“No, you don’t,” Kanan said flatly.

She blinked, then nodded. “Fair enough,” she said, reaching up to fix her veil in place again. “But I think when we reach Mustafar you’re going to wish he was still alive.”

Kanan didn’t know what to say to that, so he didn’t say anything. Barriss watched him for another moment, her eyes bright over her black veil, then she touched the control and went out into the corridor as the door slid open. Almost immediately one of Patience’s droids drifted inside, though Patience herself didn’t follow. It settled into a hover as the door closed again, the sound of the locking mechanism echoing through the small cell. Kanan sank back down again and let his head drop back against the wall behind him. He didn’t want to think about the fact that Barriss was right. Whatever the Hunter had done to him, he had always wanted Kanan alive and more or less sane: two things that no one else at the Crucible was likely to give a damn about.

*

There was a long moment of silence after Hera spoke. Finally, Sabine said, “Wasn’t Kanan just arrested by the Inquisition?”

Hera nodded. “They won’t kill him,” she said. “At least – they won’t kill him immediately, anyway. He’s too valuable to them because of what he is. But even if he’s cleared of all charges…” She bit her lip. “The Inquisition is a world in itself. It’s not like the rest of the Empire. There won’t be a court-martial, not the way you or I would get. There’s _something_ ; Kanan mentioned it to me once, but he never explained what it was. Even if he passes that test, whatever it is, he won’t…”

She took a deep breath, swiping her tongue over her lips, and tried to organize her thoughts. “None of you knew Kanan before he was an Inquisitor. I did. He was…he was one of the kindest, sweetest people I’ve ever known, though he’d argue that if you ever told him. He was the first person I’d ever met who cared about _me_ , not about my father or my family or my species. And I – I handed him over to the Inquisition. I didn’t mean to, but that doesn’t matter. He would never have become an Inquisitor if it wasn’t for me. When he came back – when they gave him back to me, and they didn’t have to – there was something broken inside him.”

Hera looked down, twisting her fingers together. “Even if he comes back again, he won’t be him. He won’t be whole, not in his mind, not in his soul. I can’t…I can’t let that happen again. Not again.” She raised her head to meet the eyes of each of the others in turn, letting her gaze sweep around the cockpit, trying to convey the urgency of her words. “I know this doesn’t make sense – not military sense, anyway. But Kanan is family, and we’ve all lost enough family to the Empire, so rescuing him makes sense to me.” She took a deep breath. “I’ll go after him by myself if I have to. I’m not ordering you, any of you, to do this. But we’ve been together a long time and we’re a team. I thought I’d give you the option.”

For a few moments the only sound in the cockpit was breathing as Sabine and Zeb looked at each other and Ezra stared blindly and frantically around, clearly wondering what he had gotten himself into. Hera bit her lip and dropped her gaze again, letting her fingers rest on the riflescope case with Kanan’s lightsaber inside it.

At last, Sabine said, “I’m not arguing, but just to be absolutely, positively clear what I’m going to be shot for when we’re being lined up for execution, we’re talking about committing treason, right?”

“Yes.”

“Okay.” Sabine leaned back in her chair, only the flicker of her fingers drumming against the arms of her chair revealing her nerves. “I’m in.”

Hera stared at her. “What? That’s it?”

“What do you want me to say?” Sabine shrugged. “Kanan’s family. I hate the Empire – sorry, but you knew that already. It’s not really much of a contest.”

Hera looked helplessly at Zeb, who just shrugged in turn. “Can’t argue with her there. I’m in.”

Chopper added noisy agreement.

“Is no one on this ship besides me actually loyal to the Empire?” Hera demanded.

There was a long moment of silence, then Zeb and Sabine both shrugged in unison. “Nope.”

Hera dropped her face into her hands. “No wonder the ISB is decommissioning us.”

“Uh, sorry to interrupt,” Ezra said, “but isn’t this, uh, sort of…crazy?”

“Kid, you’re new here, so I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt,” Sabine said. “Crazy is what we _do_. We’re who the Empire calls when it doesn’t have anyone else dumb enough to say ‘sure, that sounds like a great idea.’”

Hera rolled her eyes, but couldn’t actually contest that description. Instead, she said, “Ezra, I don’t know what Kanan told you when he recruited you, but I know that this isn’t what you signed on for. I can’t order you to do this. I also can’t take you back to Lothal, but I can drop you off on the nearest inhabited planet with enough credits that you can go wherever you want to go.” She looked at the others. “That’s true for all of you. None of you signed on for this.”

Sabine and Zeb glanced at each other. Sabine said, “You remember when you met me I was running away after blowing up part of the Imperial Academy on Mandalore, right?”

“Beating up six stormtroopers in a cantina brawl,” Zeb said. “I’ve really missed the sound their helmets make when you knock them together.”

Chopper contributed a loud, vicious screed that culminated in producing his electroprod and zapping empty air, making them all flinch back.

“Yes,” Hera told him wearily. “I remember that very clearly. I believe Agent Betzios still has the scars.”

Ezra was still hesitating, knotting his fingers together. Finally he said, “Oh, what the hell. I didn’t really expect to live to my next birthday anyway.”

“That’s not exactly the best –”

He met her eyes and nodded. “I’m in.”

“So how do we do this?” Sabine said, leaning forward. “Can we catch them in transit? We’ve done boarding actions before –”

Hera shook her head, feeling a little tension go out of her. She would have done this on her own, but to have her team with her – that meant everything. “They’ll reach Mustafar before we do, even if we turn around now. We’ll have to make planetfall on Mustafar itself.”

Sabine frowned. “What’s security like there?”

“There isn’t much,” Hera said. “There’s a fleet in orbit, but I’ve got clearance codes that will get us past them as long as the ISB hasn’t revoked them yet. The Crucible doesn’t have stormtroopers, and going by what Kanan has told me there are usually only three or four full Inquisitors there, along with however many trainees there are.”

“‘Only’ three or four?” Zeb echoed. “No offense, Hera, but I’ve seen Kanan. If any of the others are half as good as he is –”

“And there were five when he was arrested,” Sabine said. “So that’s eight at minimum.” She looked a little pale. “That’s a lot of Inquisitors.”

“Plus the trainees,” Hera reminded her. “That’s why we have to get to Kanan before they realize we’re there. They won’t be expecting it. No one actually wants to go to Mustafar.”

“So do we have plans of this place?” Zeb asked.

“Chop?” Hera said, and then felt her mouth quirk up briefly. “We’re not supposed to, but I took scans the last time Kanan had to go.”

Chopper rolled forward, projecting an image of the planet into the space between them, markers indicating the star destroyers in orbit around it. “This is three years old,” Hera allowed. “It’s the last time Kanan let me go with him. Every time he got called back after that he requisitioned transport from the nearest Imperial base instead of taking the _Phantom_ or going together.”

“What happened the last time?” Ezra asked warily.

Hera reached into the hologram and it shrank from the planet – well, moon, really – to an image of the complex that made up the Crucible, which spread out over several kilometers along the banks of a lava river. “I went inside,” she said. “Kanan never wanted me to leave the _Ghost_. I didn’t have the clearance to remain in orbit so he could take the _Phantom_ down, but I was allowed to land on one of the external landing strips. I…wanted to see where he had been –” She grimaced, but there was no better word for it “– trained, so one time when he didn’t come back I went inside.” She shrugged. “I didn’t see much. Another Inquisitor found me and took me to him and we left soon afterwards.”

Hera had seen that Inquisitor in the corridor when the First had taken Kanan away. It was a little hard to miss the helmet. Or the droids. She – Patience – had been polite, but…predatory, in a way. Like she didn’t really see Hera as a person, but as a pet that Kanan had become fond of for some reason. The other Inquisitors with Kanan when they had reached him had all looked at the two of them the same way.

_Like he was someone who had decided to go to bed with an animal_ , Hera thought with a shiver she didn’t let the others see. _And I was that animal._ It wasn’t even the same way that other members of the service looked at her, like she was something lesser but still a sentient being, still close enough to human to matter. The other Inquisitors hadn’t even given her that.

She took a deep breath. “Anyway, I’ve been inside. It’s not laid out like an Imperial Complex or one of the academies, because it’s not – it’s built over an old mining complex, from when the planet was still owned by the Mining Guild. But inside it’s a maze. I think if we can get inside undetected, we should be able to get fairly far before anyone realizes we’re there. Hopefully far enough to find Kanan.”

Sabine was eyeing the hologram dubiously. “Do they have prisoner cells somewhere in here?”

“They must,” Hera said, then had to admit, “I just don’t know where. We should be able to slice into a terminal once we’re inside, though. There must be some kind of map.”

Sabine nodded slowly, studying the hologram. “Did you take these scans from the _Ghost_?” At Hera’s nod, she added, “Can I borrow them? Maybe I can figure something out. They’ve probably got a central power core, maybe I can black the complex out, buy us some time.”

Hera nodded slowly. “I assume at that point they’ll know we’re there.”

Sabine shrugged. “I can make it look like a routine power surge. Or something. How much time do we have?”

Hera swung her chair around to look at the hyperspace readouts. “We’ll have to drop out of hyperspace to turn around and head for Mustafar,” she said slowly. “Once we do that – once we do that, ISB HQ will know that we’re not heading for Naboo anymore. But they probably won’t guess we’re going to Mustafar.” She hesitated. “I don’t know if anyone other than Beneke had access to that data.”

“What?” Zeb said. “The ISB’s tracking the ship?”

“Of course.” Hera blinked at him, surprised by his alarm. “This is an ISB ship, after all. I had Chopper find out where the tracker was a few years ago, but once we disable it, HQ’s going to realize that they have a problem.”

“They’re going to figure it out one way or another,” Sabine said, looking disgusted but not surprised. “There’s no way we can adjust course in hyperspace?”

“Naboo and Mustafar aren’t on the same route,” Hera said. “Chopper can calculate the coordinates so that we’ll only have to be out of hyperspace for a few seconds, but depending how close we are to the nearest ISB satellite, they’ll know within hours.”

Sabine’s bows narrowed in concentration, then she said, “Let me look at the tracker. I might be able to alter the transmission, make it look like we’re still on course for Naboo. Of course, if we don’t get there by the time we’re supposed to, they’ll figure out something’s wrong, but it will buy us some time.”

“We just need enough to keep the element of surprise,” Hera said. “We don’t need much.”

Sabine gave her a tight smile. “We’ll have enough.”

*

Kanan felt the _Nex_ drop out of hyperspace in the Force before his body had registered it. Even from this far out, he could still feel the planet in the Force, the swirling vergence and the backwards-and-forwards echoes of what had happened here, what would happen here. Home of the Inquisition. Graveyard of the Jedi.

Kanan should know.

He stood up as the cell door slid open. Patience and the Hangman came in, Patience collecting the droid she had left behind to watch him. Kanan stepped forward without speaking, the two Inquisitors following in behind them as he went out into the hallway, where the other three were waiting.

They marched him through the ship’s narrow corridors and down to the ramp, which was already open, revealing the hellish atmosphere of Mustafar. Kanan could taste it even before he followed the First outside - sulfur and sorrow on his tongue, in the Force, a lingering whisper of _you were sworn to destroy the Sith, not join them…_ that echoed inside his head.

It felt clearer now than it had been the last time he had been here; he saw the First’s shoulders tighten in front of him, but none of the other Inquisitors seemed to notice. Out of the corner of his eye he saw something that might have been a figure, a dark-clad shadow that stood looking out at the river of lava. _If you’re not with me, then you’re my enemy._

An answering whisper from the other side of the platform, and this time Kanan did look, but there was nothing and no one there. _Only a Sith deals in absolutes. I will do what I must._

_You will try._

Kanan had heard them before, but never so clearly, never so many. He saw the First twitch, her head turning slightly to one side, but before he could look at the platform again the Hangman propelled him forward with a hand between his shoulders. Kanan caught his balance before he could fall, though he nearly lost his footing at the transition between the ramp and the deck, and didn’t bother glaring at the other man as he kept walking forwards.

The whispers remained, a seemingly endless loop that culminated in the sound of igniting lightsabers before it began again. Kanan was aware of it until he stepped through the doors at the end of the walkway, where it abruptly vanished, leaving nothing behind in its wake but silence.

There was no light in the corridor except for the blinking eyes of Patience’s droids.

The six Inquisitors walked unerring through the darkness, their steps muffled so that all Kanan could hear was breathing all around him. Kanan could feel the Force so heavily that it was almost a physical presence, biting at his skin with chilling cold and wrapping grasping tentacles around his soul. Even the walls seemed to whisper to him, the soft, pleased murmur of the dark side.

_Hello, Jedi. Who knew that you would ever return here? It’s been_ such _a long time._

_I am not a Jedi,_ Kanan mouthed to himself in the close dark. _The Jedi are all dead. I am an Inquisitor, a servant of the Emperor –_

A soft curl of amusement that ran up his spine and made the hair on the back of his neck stand up. _The Jedi will never die, Caleb Dume. And neither will the Sith. The Force will not allow it._

_But you will._

Kanan shuddered, feeling the shift in the air as one of the other Inquisitors glanced at him – he couldn’t tell which.

They emerged into a big round room that Kanan remembered from his days as a trainee, the lights harsh after the darkness of the corridor. More beings clad in black ringed the walls, but Kanan could tell at a glance that they were unformed and nameless – only trainees, not full Inquisitors.

The Whip was standing in the center of the room, flanked by two more Inquisitors – Amity, a Terrelian Jango Jumper whose badly burned face was covered by a black helmet, and a Pantoran woman called the Seamstress. None of them looked impressed as Kanan came to a stop in front of them, the Inquisitors who had brought him in spreading out in a half-circle behind him.

“Hello, Jedi,” said the Whip, taking the lightsaber that the Hangman stepped forward to hand him. He glanced down at it, then turned his attention back to Kanan. “I always thought you’d end up here.”

Kanan raised his chin, aware of all the eyes on him, and met the Nautolan’s gaze. He let himself smile, just a little. “Yeah?” he said. “What gave you that idea?”

“The Hunter,” said the Whip, “was very good at what he did, but I’ve never understood what he saw in you. And now he is dead. Killed by another one of your kind.”

Kanan bared his teeth like the Hound he had been named. “There’s no one else like me, Whip. You and the Hunter saw to that.”

“We shall see,” said the Whip. “Lord Vader will be here in the morning to witness your trials, Jedi, and then we will discover the truth of what you really are beneath all your lies and masks.”

“Careful,” Kanan said as the First and Patience came up to take him by either arm and lead him away. “You might not like the answers you get.”

*

_Five years ago_

It was dark by the time Hera finally left the Naboo Imperial Complex and returned to the _Ghost_ , docked in one of the city’s larger spaceports. By now, she supposed, Kanan was well on his way to Mustafar and to whatever awaited him there.

_He’ll come back. They said he’d come back. He has to come back._

Despite the fact that all she had wanted to do had been to go back to the _Ghost_ and cry her eyes out, she had still had to go to the briefing for which they had originally been summoned to Naboo. It had dragged on for hours and by the end it had been clear to Hera that her part had originally been meant for two, not for one; the operation had been planned by someone who had intended to use Kanan in it, though no one had said as much. It was going to be a big operation, with agents pulled from all over the galaxy; the special agent in charge was a woman whom Hera had heard of, but had never met before.

Hera had been the only nonhuman in the room. She had forgotten what that felt like, especially in the service, which seemed to attract the most prejudiced humans in the galaxy. All of them seemed to have heard what had happened to Kanan – what they thought had happened to Kanan. Nobody had said it out loud, but Hera had seen the way that they all looked at her, half-speculative, the way human men in the service always looked at Twi’lek women. Especially Twi’lek women whom they knew had slept with human men.

Hera had been in the field too long. She should have been used to it.

The _Ghost_ was a comfortable, familiar sight inside the confines of the landing bay as Hera pushed in through a door. She saw Chopper in the bubble of the cockpit; he waved one pronged arm at her and then rolled away. A few moments later the ship’s landing ramp went down, Chopper waiting for her as she reached it. He looked from side to side, apparently searching for Kanan before warbling a question.

“Kanan’s not here,” Hera said, her voice hitching on the third syllable. “He’s gone.” She swallowed. “He’ll come back.”

In response to Chopper’s next question, she said, “I don’t know.”

He followed her into the _Ghost_ ’s hold; she punched the control to close the ramp behind her, then set the locking mechanism. Only Kanan had the code, unless Beneke and her other handlers had overrides. Hera wouldn’t be surprised.

She unfastened her uniform jacket as she made her way through the silent halls of the ship. _Must be a lot to keep up_ , Kanan had said after Gorse, when Hera had still been wondering whether or not to cut him loose. _You might need a crew for something like that._

Hera had wanted to protest that she didn’t need anyone, but something had stopped her. She had liked Kanan, despite her desire not to like anyone. Twi’leks were social; Hera had grown up surrounded by her aunts and her cousins. The only time in her life that Hera had ever been alone, really alone, had been in her cell all those years ago. The Academy had been a miserable experience, but it had been full of other cadets. She had wanted – she hadn’t known what she wanted. Maybe taking Kanan with her had been her own small rebellion against the Empire.

Hera stepped dead in the doorway to the lounge, her hands frozen on the flap of her jacket. _No,_ she thought, _no no no, that’s my father, that’s not me._

She had taken Kanan because she wanted him, nothing more. It had been stupid and selfish and against all her training, but Hera had wanted him, and so she had taken him with her. And now –

_Jedi. Kanan is a Jedi._

How could she not have seen it? She knew that Kanan had been capable of extraordinary feats, but they were – they hadn’t been beyond the realm of human capacity, which Hera was well aware of from her time in the Academy. He had never done any of the things Jedi were supposed to have been capable of doing – moving things without touching them, or predicting the future, or making people believe things that weren’t true. Or at least he had never done so that Hera had seen.

She scowled and pulled her jacket off, balling it up and flinging it in the direction of the holotable. Hera wasn’t consciously aware of making the decision, but a moment later she found herself standing in front of the door to Kanan’s cabin, her fingers hovering over the control. After an instant of hesitation she pressed it and went inside, reaching to turn the lights on.

Kanan was scrupulously neat and his cabin was so sparse that if it hadn’t been for the sheets on the bed it would be easy to take it as unoccupied. He had worn neither armor nor sidearm to the Imperial Complex and they were packed away out of sight. His bunk had been made with military-neat corners that would have passed any inspection at the Academy; Hera couldn’t remember the last time he had slept in it rather than with her. He had never put up posters on the walls; there weren’t any dirty dishes borrowed from the galley sitting out or clothes lying around. Kanan was the kind of person who seemed like he should have been a slob when given the opportunity; the fact that he wasn’t had taken Hera by surprise.

She stood still for a few heartbeats, looking around, then crossed the room and crouched down in front of the bunk, feeling for the latch to the nearest drawer. It slid open as she touched it, revealing his holstered blaster and the scuffed green plates of his armor on top of neatly folded clothes. Hera lifted them out carefully, then dug through the clothes until her fingers hit the bottom of the drawer. She replaced the blaster and armor, then moved onto the next drawer, which contained more clothes. It wasn’t that Kanan had that many clothes; they were just small drawers.

She had almost given up when she touched rounded metal.

Hera gathered up an armful of clothes and dumped the on the floor beside her. At the bottom of the drawer was a metal cylinder with a hanging loop on one end, a smaller piece of metal that she could tell was meant to fit onto the first, and a cube decorated in gold filigree and clear gems. Hera ignored the cube, but took out the two metal pieces, fitting them together with hands that were suddenly shaking.

She stared at it with a sick feeling in her stomach, even though she had already known what it was before she put it together. Hera weighed it in her hands, her fingers brushing over the trigger before drawing back.

A lightsaber. The weapon of a Jedi.

Kanan’s weapon.

*

_Present day_

Hera Syndulla stood alone in her cabin, pulling her cuirass on and drawing the straps tight. She put one foot up on the edge of her bunk to strap on first one thigh holster, then another, checking the charges on her sidearms before she slid them home. Her holdout pistol went into its boot holster, one vibroblade into a sheath at the small of her back, another inside her other boot. She checked the pouches on her belt, filled with explosives, concussion and stun grenades, and electronic disruptors.

Elsewhere in the _Ghost_ Sabine and Zeb were going through similar rituals. All of them were gearing up the way they would for a heavy operation, because that was what this was going to be. They might be able to get into the Crucible undetected; they wouldn’t be able to walk out so.

Hera looked at the mirror again. Her rank markers reflected back at her, a few colored plasteel squares on the breast of her cuirass. She looked at them for a long moment, then reached up and pulled them off, dropping them on the table beside her discarded lekku wrappings.

“Hera?”

When she turned, it was to find Ezra standing in the doorway. Unlike the others, he wasn’t armed except for the energy slingshot on his wrist; his face was pale but set, as if now that he had found himself on this path, he was determined to walk it to the end.

“Sabine says we’re five minutes out,” he said.

“All right.” Hera picked up the lightsaber from the table, clipping it to the back of her belt, the way Kanan carried his when he was in civvies. He was going to need it when they found him.

Ezra was breathing hard, his breath coming in sharp gasps. “You don’t have to do this,” Hera said, turning back to him. “You can stay here. We’ll come back for you.”

He shook his head a little. “I think you’re all crazy,” he said. “Who does this? Walks straight into one of the most dangerous places in the Empire, all for one man?”

“We do,” Hera said.

“Yeah,” Ezra said. “Well, I guess I do too.”

He took a deep breath and stepped back out into the hallway. Hera followed him into the cockpit, dropping into the pilot’s seat as the hyperspace alert began to blink. Sabine, in the co-pilot’s chair and armed to the teeth, gave her a sharp nod. Behind them, the door slid open as Zeb came in, looking more or less the same as he always did except for a bandolier of explosives slung over his chest. He sank down into his seat, Ezra taking the empty fourth chair.

Chopper beeped a warning from where he was plugged into a console.

“All right,” Hera said, reaching for the hyperspace lever. “Let’s go to war.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, thanks to my lovely and wonderful beta Xena, who helped me to take a very rough first draft to the final form. Thanks also to Jo, for looking over a scene I had doubts about.
> 
> I do daily progress reports over on Tumblr, under the tag "[daily fic snippet](http://bedlamsbard.tumblr.com/tagged/daily%20fic%20snippet)," if you want to keep track of what I'm working on or get a hint of what's happening in the next few chapters. (I'm usually writing three chapters ahead of the last posted chapter.)


	19. Jedi

As deep in trance as he was, the ghosts of Mustafar seemed closer than ever. Kanan felt them whisper at the edges of his consciousness – Inquisitors and trainees who had died here in conflict with their own, Jedi and the followers of other Force traditions who had been brought here to be executed, shallow shadows of Force-null beings whose death at a vergence had imprinted that moment of dying on the fabric of the place. Laid over it all was the planet’s true haunting, the duel that never ended, two Jedi Knights locked in an eternal conflict that had set the galaxy aflame. Kanan had been aware of it when he had been a trainee here, but had never been able to work out if the trainers or the other trainees had been; for some reason now it had been pushed closer to the surface than ever, so that Kanan barely had to close his eyes before he felt the ripples of it in the Force.

_Who were you?_ he wondered, not for the first time. _Or who will you be?_

In the Force time lost all meaning; Kanan had no way of knowing if the two warriors had fought fifteen years ago as the Jedi Order lay burning, or a thousand years past in the twilight of the Old Republic, or if it had yet to come, if there was a future for the Jedi to live and die again. The Force never repeated itself, but sometimes it rhymed.

But somehow – somehow there was a flicker of familiarity about them. It might have been nothing more than their shared background, because Jedi resonated to each other in the Force no matter how twisted or fallen they were, but while Kanan had never seen their faces, he had heard their voices more times than he could count, and he swore that he had heard them before in his waking life – in his old life. Kanan Jarrus had never known them, but Caleb Dume had once.

_Who…?_

Did it even matter anymore?

The two duelists fought across the surface of his mind as Kanan sank even deeper into his meditation, feeling the borders of his own consciousness begin to blur and fray off into the Force. Whispers and flickers of vision pressed in around him; he let them pass through himself, aware of them but not allowing himself to focus on anything.

_warm summer evening, the crackle of flames in front of him and the fascinating puzzle of a holocron in his hands, the curious chirping of it in his mind and_

_shock of realization, his mind catching up with his eyes adding fifteen years of accelerated aging onto faces that had once been more familiar than his own_

_they’re clones!_

_you were betrayed. but by palpatine, not by us. he used you to destroy the jedi so he could have his_

_empire? you work for the empire? you’re an imperial? you can’t be an imperial, you’re a_

_green-skinned twi’lek woman standing in the muck of a moonlit alley, surrounded by groaning bodies, their hands still joined by the_

_black fabric in his hands, staring down at the garments laid out for him even as a cool hand slid up his bare back to settle on his_

_neck caught beneath the grinding pain of a boot, his hands wrapped around the ankle of the stormtrooper standing over him, blaster pointed at his_

_you mean – my apprentice?_

_face like something out of his nightmares, red and black with gleaming yellow eyes, and a scarlet blade slashing at his_

_eyes, searing pain in his eyes, pain like he had never felt before, encompassing everything, his body, a world, a galaxy, and he sensed_

_a shadow_

_saw_

_red_

_felt_

_darkness_

_saw_

– nothing.

Kanan opened his eyes with a gasp, raising chained hands to rub at them and reassure himself that they were still there. He was breathing hard, startled out of his trance by the ghost pain of – another life? Of the future? Not the present, at least. He had been knocked around plenty, but that was just how Inquisitors treated each other; they hadn’t gone to work on him yet and he knew that they wouldn’t until he had stood his trials and either passed or failed.

The Inquisition believed in the judgment of the Force too. It just wasn’t the same side of the Force that Kanan had been raised to follow.

“What did you see?”

Kanan flinched at the sound of the Whip’s voice, raising his gaze. For a moment, all he could see was red, and he felt a heartbeat of fear so intense that he could barely breathe before it cleared to reveal the Whip standing before him, along with the First and the Seamstress. Kanan hadn’t heard their entrance, too deep in his meditative trance; he had been so thrown by the phantom pain in his eyes that he hadn’t even registered their presence when he had come out of it.

He raised his chin and straightened his back, aware suddenly of the crushing reality of his own body – the shock collar on his throat, the manacles on wrists and ankles, with a connecting chain strung through a metal loop on the floor in front of him. It was better than he had seen them treat other captured Jedi or rogue Inquisitors, anyway.

“Nothing I care to share with you,” he said, arching an eyebrow.

The Whip’s head-tendrils flicked in a gesture that Kanan recognized as suspicion. His pupil-less black gaze was hard to read, the syrupy strands of the dark side making it difficult for Kanan to gain any idea of what was in his mind – not that the Whip hadn’t always been difficult to get a feel from anyway.

Inquisitors didn’t have visions. Oh, they _could_ – Kanan had been telling the truth when he had told Ezra that precognition was a normal Force ability – but few Inquisitors ever learned how to meditate, to reach inside themselves and find that stillness long enough to see further ahead than what was needed to avoid the next lightsaber blow. Precognition wasn’t one of the skills taught at the Crucible, either, and in fact it was actively discouraged; the Inquisition didn’t like its people actually listening to the Force. You never knew what it was going to say.

The Whip lifted a hand, fingers curving in the direction of Kanan’s face. Kanan felt the Force press in against him, agony spreading outwards from the base of his neck along every nerve of his body. But it paled in comparison to the phantom memory of the searing agony of his eyes burning away, and he clenched his jaw, trying to force it aside as the Whip said, “You will tell me what you see.”

The pressure of the Force increased inside his head and he gasped a breath, feeling the Whip trying to drag his visions back to the surface. “No,” he said through gritted teeth. “No –”

“You will tell me why you committed this treason.”

Kanan squeezed his eyes shut, resisting the urge to demand to know _what_ treason, specifically, the Whip wanted to know about. “I committed – no treason –” he managed to say past the blinding pain in his body, the pressure in his mind. “My loyalty is – to the Emperor – to the Empire –”

And there was that whisper again, the ghosts of Mustafar.

_Your new empire? My allegiance is to the Republic, to democracy!_

If the Whip heard it too, he made no indication of it, just pressed his mental assault. “You will tell me what you see, Jedi. You will tell me why you committed this treason.”

“I see –”

The pressure was unbelievable, worse than anything Kanan had felt since his trainee days, when the Hunter and the Whip had nearly taken him to pieces trying to find out if he knew anything about any other surviving Jedi. Kanan bit the inside of his mouth so hard that he tasted blood, but he still couldn’t help saying, “I see –”

_a temple, stone with a bright star inside, the force clean and pure as he hadn’t felt it in years, and beside him_

“– Ezra,” he gasped, and the pressure tore at him, the Force running through his veins, his nerves, setting his whole body afire; it was everything Kanan could do not to scream. “Not him. Not – him.”

“What do you see?”

_a temple, red and glassy and stone with a dark star inside, surrounded by_

“I see –”

_this was a battlefield_

“Go on.”

“I see –”

_a sith temple!_

Kanan’s eyes snapped open. The pressure stopped as the Whip drew his hand back, waiting for his response. The words were on the tip of Kanan’s tongue, but he made himself hold them back, knew that he couldn’t give them this.

Instead he spat blood on the floor at the Whip’s feet. “I see you,” he said, grinning at him through bloody teeth, “growing more and more frustrated. I’m not _your_ dog, Whip. I never was.”

The Whip’s backhand knocked him over.

Kanan hit the metal floor hard enough that his head rang, not quite managing to curl in to protect himself before the Whip kicked him in the belly. Kanan grabbed for his ankle, but his chains jerked him back, and the Whip kicked him again.

“You will regret that, Jedi,” he said.

“Wouldn’t be the first time,” Kanan gasped. “That’s fine. I long ago learned to live with regret.”

The Whip scowled, kicked him again, and left. The Seamstress followed him as Kanan picked himself up off the floor, wincing and trying to wipe blood off his face. He didn’t realize that the First hadn’t followed the other two Inquisitors out of the room until she crouched down in front of him.

“That was foolish, Stray,” she said. “What did you hope to gain by that show of defiance? It hardly went far towards proving your innocence.”

“You know the Whip as well as I do,” Kanan said, his voice still a little hoarse. “There’s nothing I could have said that he would have believed; I might as well give him a show.” He touched his cheek, where the Whip had struck him, but his fingers came away clean; the only blood drawn had come from Kanan cutting himself on his own teeth.

The First straightened up, crossing her arms over her chest so that she could look down at him from her superior vantage point. “What did you see?”

“That’s for me to know and you to wonder,” Kanan said, running his tongue over his cut lip. It was poor etiquette for one Jedi to ask another what they had seen in their visions, but Kanan supposed that hardly mattered to her anymore.

Uneasily, his brushed his fingers over his eyelids again, his chains rattling as he did so. There were easier ways to restrain him, but Inquisitors tended to go for style over substance. That tended to get a lot of them killed.

The First half-turned away, and Kanan thought for a moment that she meant to leave. Then she said without looking at him, “Did you see _them_?”

He blinked. “You’ve seen them before?”

“Yes. They’re very…near…this time.” Her gaze cut towards him for less than a heartbeat, then away again, fixing on the battered wall. “I’ve never felt them this close before.”

“Do you know who they are – were?”

He saw her lids dip briefly in acknowledgment. “Mustafar is where Jedi come to die, Stray. They came. They fought. They died on each other’s blades, in spirit if not in body, because they both left this place breathing.”

“Who?” Kanan asked. “Who were they? Someone we knew?”

“I think they were the only two people in the galaxy who ever really knew each other,” she said finally. “And I suppose they didn’t really know each other all that well, as it turned out.” She finally turned back to him, raising her chin. “You know that you’re going to die here too, just like all the rest of the Jedi.”

“Only a few of them died here,” Kanan said. “Most were slaughtered in the Temple or in the field. Most of us didn’t survive to end up here.”

“‘Us’?” she echoed.

Kanan acknowledged the slip with a tilt of his head and an arched eyebrow.

She shook her head and turned away to go. “You’ll be lucky if you live through the night, Stray.”

Kanan waited until she was at the door before he said, “You know they took all the trainees to the Spire, don’t you?”

She stopped with her hand outreached for the control panel, a faint tremor running through the Force.

“She was still alive then,” Kanan said. “It was the first time I had seen another Jedi since the Hunt for the Fisher, when she went rogue. Before that I thought I was the last. That it didn’t matter anymore because all the rest of us were dead.” He could taste blood in his mouth from his cut lip. “I guess they thought so too, because she was executed the next year. I wasn’t there; I was in the field already. But you were.”

She turned slowly, her veil doing little to conceal her expression.

“Do you remember Luminara Unduli’s last word to you?” Kanan said. “Her last and final breath before she died? You do, don’t you? You see it in your sleep. You hear her voice when you wake. Tell me, Barriss Offee, what was her last word to you?”

Her slap knocked his head sideways. Kanan hadn’t even seen her move.

He spat out another mouthful of blood. “I don’t think that was it.”

She was trembling with rage, her veil shivering in a constant shimmer of black fabric. “You sound like the Hunter.”

“I am what my masters made me,” Kanan said. “You and the Whip and the rest of the Crucible all call me Jedi, but you forget that I am an Inquisitor too. And maybe you all trained me too well. Who knows?” he grinned, showing bloodstained teeth. “Maybe the Hunter did succeed in beating the Jedi out of me. He certainly tried hard enough. And if there’s one thing we learned from Master Yoda, it’s that there is no try.”

She raised her hand again. Kanan glared up at her, daring her to do it, but at last she lowered her trembling hand. “You are going to die here, Hunter’s Hound,” she said. “Either in the trials or by the hand of an Inquisitor – you are going to die.”

“I’d say not to make promises you can’t keep,” Kanan said. “But I think we both know which of the two of us broke their vows first.”

She turned away without responding, her shoulders shuddering beneath her mantle. “I’ll see you at your trials, Hound,” she said, and left him alone with the dark and the ghosts.

*

The _Ghost_ flashed out of hyperspace directly in front of three star destroyers.

Ezra, perched in the co-pilot’s chair beside Hera, caught his breath, his hands clenching on the armrests. He had seen star destroyers during the battle with the rebel fleet, but that had been from a distance – well, up until the moment when Kanan had nearly rammed one, anyway. Those star destroyers had ostensibly been on their side; these ones…weren’t.

“Sending transponder codes,” Hera said, her voice crisp. “Hopefully Naboo hasn’t deactivated them yet.”

“What do we do if they have?” Zeb asked over the ship’s comm system; he was up in the turret gun.

“That’s why you and Sabine are at the guns,” Hera said.

“Uh, your ship’s nice and all, but I’m pretty sure you can’t outshoot a star destroyer,” Ezra had to point out. Maybe he should have taken the offer to be dropped off in the nearest inhabited system after all, since there was a good chance today would be his last day drawing breath.

“No, but I can definitely outfly one,” Hera said. Something pinged on the console in front of her and she let out her breath. “But I won’t have to. We’ve got clearance. Everyone, stay sharp.”

“Not going to be a problem,” Sabine called up from the gunner’s bubble beneath the cockpit, twisting to look up at them. “We’re out in the middle of nowhere. Why so many star destroyers? No one’s going to come out here. Except us, obviously,” she added. “This just seems excessive even for an Imperial base.”

“Take it up with the Inquisition,” Hera said.

The _Ghost_ slid silently past the star destroyers, a pair of TIEs streaking by on patrol. Ezra tightened his grip on the chair’s armrests, his breath coming out in labored gasps. He was all for sticking it to the Empire, but this was really pushing it.

“Definitely shouldn’t have gone to the parade,” he muttered to himself.

“What was that?” Hera asked.

“Uh, nothing.” Ezra watched the red ember of Mustafar grow closer and closer. It looked toxic, somehow, like it was burning up from the inside out. He could practically feel it inside his head, a devouring heat that clawed at him, both seductive and repulsive at the same time. It was like there was something – not rotten, that wasn’t the right word, but something _wrong_ at the moon’s core.

He could feel it. There was something there, something that he couldn’t have put into words if his life had depended on it, but there was something _there_.

Not just something, Ezra realized, staring out the viewport. Someone. Someone familiar.

“I can feel him,” he said out loud. 

“What?” Hera glanced at him, her hands tightening on the control yoke. “Feel who?”

“Kanan,” Ezra said. “I don’t know how, but –” He raised a hand to his head, wiggling his fingers in empty air. “I can _feel_ him. He’s down there.”

Hera blinked, but apparently took that in stride. “Is he alive? Is he hurt?”

Ezra bit his lip in concentration, closing his eyes again so that he wasn’t distracted by the sight of the looming moon. He was vaguely aware of stretching one hand out, as though the gesture might bring him closer.

Now that he was actually thinking about it, that flicker of _presence_ seemed to be resisting him. Ezra furrowed his brow, concentrating on it, but the harder he tried, the further away it seemed to slip.

_Don’t think of it as something you do_ , Kanan had said what seemed like days ago, even though it had only been yesterday. _Think of it as something you are. You’re connected to every living being in the universe._

“Okay,” he whispered to himself. “Okay, you can do this.”

Ezra reached out again, settling inside himself. He opened – not his eyes, not his _real_ eyes, but he looked and he _saw_. He saw –

– a shadow –

– _you were my brother! I loved you!_ –

– Kanan, but a younger Kanan, with someone else’s hand around his throat –

– a pair of duelists, strangers, blue lightsabers moving so quickly they were only blurs –

– a hundred flickering faces, scarlet lightsabers, bodies on the floor –

– Kanan.

He was sitting on the floor of what looked like a cell, cuffed at wrists and ankles and with a metal collar around his throat. It wasn’t the younger Kanan he had seen a heartbeat earlier; it was the Kanan Ezra had met on Lothal. His eyes were closed; he was sitting cross-legged, apparently unconcerned by the chains he was wearing. Even as Ezra registered this his eyes snapped open, and Ezra felt one of those piercing moments of _connection_ , time slowing and stopping until there was nothing else in the galaxy.

Then it was gone.

Ezra opened his eyes, gasping for breath. He dropped his hand back to his knee, his arm aching as though he had been holding it at full extension for a long time, and turned his head to see Hera still staring at him.

“Is he alive?” she asked again. “Is he well?”

Ezra nodded, mostly because he couldn’t quite remember how to form words, let alone sentences. Did Kanan do this kind of thing _every day_? “He’s –” he managed eventually. “Yeah, he’s – he’s fine. He seems fine.” He thought about it for a moment. “He’s pretty angry.”

Hera let out her breath slowly. “He hates Mustafar,” she said quietly. “More than anything.”

They both looked up as the cockpit doors slid open, Zeb and Sabine coming back inside. Ezra folded a hand into a fist and pushed it against the knee of his trousers, staring out the viewport as they dipped down into the moon’s atmosphere.

“Four minutes to drop,” Hera said, checking their position on her sensor boards. “Go get ready. I’ll meet you down there.”

Zeb and Sabine nodded, Sabine fingering her blasters and Zeb crossing his arms over his chest. They left again and Hera turned to Ezra.

“What we’re going to do will be very dangerous, Ezra,” she said. “You have no obligation to join us. You can stay here on the _Ghost_ with Chopper; no one will blame you. You never signed up for this.”

Ezra kicked a foot, hesitating. It wasn’t anything he hadn’t said to himself numerous times since Hera had broached her plan in the first place, and she wasn’t wrong. This was easily the stupidest thing he had ever even considered doing, and it was for someone who was virtually a stranger. Kanan was an Inquisitor. Ezra wasn’t entirely sure what that meant, but he knew enough about the Empire to guess that it didn’t mean anything good, not for anyone. Whatever was going to happen to Kanan, he had probably done something to deserve at least some of it.

Except – except.

Kanan had been nice to him – not the kind of nice that Ezra had learned to be wary of over the past eight years, because it meant that someone wanted something from you, but nice for the sake of being nice. And, okay, yeah, he’d chased Ezra across half the city and then tracked him back to his tower, but he had never actually tried to hurt him, though Ezra was aware that was a pretty low bar to have. And the _Ghost_ – these people, Hera and Sabine and Zeb and even Chopper – they all cared so much. No one on Lothal cared that much about anything, let alone another person. Let alone an Imperial. Ezra hadn’t thought that that was something he missed after all this time, but he wanted to be a part of that. Even if it cost him.

He put his shoulders back and looked up at Hera’s concerned face. “I’ll do it,” he said. “You know it’s completely crazy, though, right?”

“Yes,” Hera said. “I am very aware of that fact.”

*

Hera pulled her goggles down over her eyes as the _Ghost_ came to a hover over the back end of the Crucible complex, the ramp opening to emit a blast of heat even from this far up. “Last chance to back out,” she said, checking the hand-repulsors she was wearing. They weren’t as good as a jetpack, which Hera had trained on at the Imperial Academy, but they would do for this. Getting to the moon’s surface wasn’t going to be a problem. Getting back to the _Ghost_ would.

“Came this far,” Zeb said, his voice slightly muffled by the breather he was wearing. “Be a shame to step back now.”

“Like I said, I’m in,” Sabine said, adjusting her own repulsors. She didn’t need extra apparatus; she was just wearing her helmet, which would do as good a job at protecting her face and filtering out the planet’s noxious fumes as the rest of their gear.

Hera flicked a glance at Ezra, who had produced an elaborately painted cadet’s helmet from somewhere. He had the faceplate up; he looked pale but determined. “I said I’m in.”

Hera nodded and pulled her own breather up, making sure that the edges were sealed tight to her skin. Hopefully they wouldn’t be on the unprotected surface long enough for it to matter, but one thing she had learned from six years as an ISB field agent was that nothing went according to plan, so it was best to be prepared for all eventualities.

“You know how to use those, kid?” Sabine muttered to Ezra as he fumbled with his repulsors.

“Sure.”

“Please try not to die until we’ve gotten Kanan back,” Hera said, stepping up to the edge of the ramp. She looked down at the shape of the Crucible complex beneath her, licking her lips beneath her breathing mask, and leapt.

If she had been anywhere else, she might have whooped in glee. Hera loved the _Ghost_ , loved being in the cockpit of a TIE fighter; one of her fondest memories from her time at the Imperial Academy had been the week they had spent training with jetpacks, when there had been no barrier between her and the sky. This was nearly as good, the wind whipping her lekku back and biting at her cheeks as she pressed her arms back against her sides to streamline her freefall. Hera grinned behind her breathing mask, taking a few seconds just to enjoy herself, then turned her attention back to the rapidly-growing square of rooftop below her.

She waited until the last possible moment before she fired her repulsors, slowing her descent enough that she could land in a roll on the rooftop, coming up with her blaster drawn as she looked around.

There was no one else on the roof, no security guards or automated defenses that she could see, and Hera breathed a sigh of relief as she straightened to her feet. Sabine and Zeb followed a moment later, Ezra just after them, barely firing his repulsors in time. He ended up sitting on the roof, breathing hard and radiating surprise at his own nerve.

Hera took her comlink off her belt. “Chopper, we’re all here,” she said. “Keep out of sight. We’ll signal when we need you. This shouldn’t take long.”

_One way or another_ , she thought, replacing her comlink. She shed her repulsors and tucked them into a pouch on her belt; they wouldn’t be needed any time soon. Hopefully.

When she turned back to the others, she saw that Zeb had unslung his bo-rifle from across his back, Sabine had drawn her blasters, and Ezra was bouncing nervously on the balls of his feet. _They came_ , Hera thought, somehow still a little astonished by that. They hadn’t had to, but they had come. The only person who had ever done that for her before had been Kanan.

She took a deep breath. “Everyone in there who isn’t Kanan is the enemy,” she said. “Shoot to kill.”

She didn’t wait to see if there were any questions, just turned and headed towards the hatch on the opposite side of the roof. It opened without hesitation when she found the control pad, and Hera looked down warily, trying to see as much of the corridor beneath as she could before she decided it was clear and climbed down the ladder just beneath it, jumping down the last few rungs. The others followed her, Zeb pausing to close the hatch behind them.

The corridor was dimly lit with red light that made the back of Hera’s neck itch. She pulled her breathing mask off and pushed her goggles up, stowing the breather away before heading down the corridor. Zeb did the same; Ezra and Sabine kept their helmets on. None of them spoke as they made their way down the corridor, Hera leading with her raised blaster.

Hera wasn’t sure what she had been expecting of the Crucible, but it wasn’t this cool quiet. The corridors were utterly deserted as they made their way through them, not even a mouse droid in sight, let alone an Inquisitor or stormtrooper. Despite that her skin was creeping; there was something about this place, something that kept her lekku stiff and made her certain that she was going to turn a corner to find some kind of abyssal horror from her nightmares waiting for her.

After about five minutes Sabine tapped her shoulder to get her attention. “Data terminal,” she said, pointing, and Hera nodded.

“Let’s hope it’s not encrypted.”

It wasn’t. She and Sabine leaned over it as Zeb and Ezra kept watch, though Ezra had his arms wrapped around himself, shivering. When Sabine looked a question at him, he mumbled, “It’s cold. Can’t you feel it?”

“Must be a draft,” Zeb said.

“Wouldn’t a draft here be warm?” Sabine mused. “I can’t find Kanan’s name anywhere in here.”

“Try his operating number,” Hera said. “INQ-065. If that doesn’t work, try his official name.”

Sabine blinked. “Isn’t Kanan Jarrus his name?”

“Not as far as the Inquisition is concerned,” Hera said, her mouth tight. “He’ll be in there under the Hound, if they’re using anything other than his number.”

“The Hound? That’s not a name.”

Hera just looked at her. Sabine shook her head and bent over the terminal again. “Okay. He’s in the holding cells on level 4, cross-corridor B-23.” She fumbled in her pouches for a moment, then pulled out a data tape and stuck it into the terminal port. “I’m going to make a copy of the plans. “He’s being held for something they’re just calling the trials? Plural, not singular.”

“I don’t know what that is,” Hera admitted. “But whatever it is, it doesn’t sound good.”

“Trials never are,” Zeb said with feeling. “You got it? Let’s go.” 

Sabine passed the data tape to Hera, who copied it onto her wrist comm and activated the map. She studied it for a few moments, mentally tracing out the route to the holding cells that was least likely to run them into anyone, then turned it off and drew her blaster again.

The holding cells were in the lower levels of the complex, nowhere near where they had arrived. Hera’s heart was in her throat as they made their way quickly through the dimly-lit corridors, waiting for a security droid or a stormtrooper to come around a corner despite everything she had been told about the Crucible. It felt like walking through a ruin, like there was no one here alive at all, and yet she knew that couldn’t be true. Somewhere in here were at least a dozen trainee Inquisitors, as well as full Inquisitors like Kanan and the First. Somewhere in here was Kanan.

They were three levels down and a building over from their entry point when Hera froze, holding up a closed fist to stop the others. She glanced up to see Zeb nod slightly; he had heard it too. Carefully, Hera took a step forward and peered around the corner.

There was an Inquisitor walking down the exact center of the hallway towards them, a male Rodian that Hera had never seen before. He was wearing all black, with one of the round-hilted lightsabers that Kanan hated slung at his hip.

Hera eyed him, then jerked her head at Zeb and pressed a finger to her lips. He nodded in understanding, moving up beside her. As the Rodian passed them without looking in their direction, Zeb stepped out of the cross-corridor and slammed his extended bo-rifle up between his shoulder blades. Sparks ran over the Rodian’s body as electricity radiated from the point of contact, then he dropped to the floor, still twitching faintly.

Hera holstered her blaster as Zeb retracted his bo-rifle back to blaster form, drawing her vibroblade. She crouched down beside the Rodian, hesitating for a moment, but she knew exactly what her trainers at the Academy would have said. She slashed the blade quickly across the Rodian’s throat and stepped back out of the spray of blood.

It wasn’t the first time she had killed someone in cold blood, but it was the first time she had ever killed another Imperial. Hera stared down at the body, her heart pounding in her throat, then made herself wipe her blade clean before sheathing it again.

“We can’t leave an enemy behind us,” she said in an undertone, not sure if she was talking to herself or to the others.

“We’re not going to be able to hide that,” Sabine observed.

“We’re not going to.” Hera forced herself to ignore the body and triggered the holomap on her wrist comm again. “We’re not far from the power center for the complex. Sabine, Zeb, you head there, prepare to black us out on my signal or whenever you think it’s necessary. Ezra and I will go after Kanan.”

“You sure splitting up is a good idea?” Zeb asked.

“Absolutely not,” Hera said. “But it’s what we’re going to do. We’ll meet at the rally point. Keep your comlinks on.”

They both nodded solemnly. “Good luck,” Sabine said.

Hera hesitated for a moment, then added, “Sabine.”

“Yeah?”

“If you don’t hear from us in an hour, blow the whole place to hell.”

Sabine blinked, then nodded again. “Okay. You want us to come after you?”

“No. Get to Chopper and the _Ghost_ and get out. If it takes longer than that, then we won’t be leaving at all.”

Zeb and Sabine glanced at each other. Ezra swallowed nervously, fidgeting in place, but didn’t protest. All Zeb said was, “We’d better hear from you.”

Hera just nodded in reply. “Come on,” she told Ezra, drawing her blaster again.

They ran one way down the hallway, Sabine and Zeb the other. Ezra kept gamely up with Hera despite his shorter legs, his expression concealed beneath his helmet. She had to pause a few times to check the holomap, but they were definitely headed in the right direction, even if they still didn’t see any other beings.

_They’re around here somewhere, though_ , Hera thought, her boots a light patter on the floor. _They have to be._ But if she could just find Kanan before the rest of the Inquisition realized that there were intruders here, then she was certain they would be able to get out. Kanan knew this complex, and Kanan could take any other Inquisitor in a fight, fair or otherwise. They just had to find him first.

She came skidding to a stop as Ezra grabbed the back of her jacket. “There’s something there,” he hissed. “I don’t know how I know, but – there’s definitely something there.”

Hera glanced back at him, but with his helmet plates down she couldn’t see his face. Kanan had confessed to her that he had recruited Ezra because Ezra was like him, that he had the same gift, but he wouldn’t see Ezra corrupted by the Crucible. Hera had her own feelings on whether or not Kanan had actually been corrupted by anyone, but she trusted his judgment, and that meant she was going to trust Ezra’s feelings.

“All right. Stay behind me.” She advanced more slowly, leading with her blaster. Ezra followed with his hand on his energy slingshot, and Hera thought distractedly that she should have made sure he had something that actually counted as a weapon before they left the Ghost.

When they reached the next cross-corridor, she stopped and pressed her shoulder against the wall, peering around the corridor. Oh yes. There was definitely something there – a pair of commando droids standing in front of a closed door that, according to the complex plans, led to the holding cells. _We must be in the right place._

Well, at least it wasn’t an Inquisitor.

Neither of the two droids seemed to have noticed their approach, so Hera pulled back behind the corner, licking her lips. Kanan had never mentioned that there were commando droids in the Crucible, though Hera supposed it made sense; back during the Clone Wars, they had been designed for killing Jedi. Now that there were no more Jedi, the Crucible could use them to keep its Inquisitors in line.

Ezra edged past her to peer around the corner. “There’s only two of them,” he said in a whisper. “We can take –”

The droids moved.

They flung themselves down the hallway towards Hera and Ezra, drawing vibroswords from behind their backs. Ezra yelled in startled reflex and Hera swore, firing as quickly as she could pull the trigger on her blaster. A few of the bolts knocked the droids back for an instant, but otherwise didn’t seem to have any noticeable impact. Ezra’s energy slingshot had even less effect.

“Run!” Hera yelled.

“What about –”

“Kanan doesn’t want to come out right now!”

They ran, pelting down the hallway. Hera turned to fire wildly over her shoulder every few steps, drawing her second blaster as she did so, until they stumbled past the heavy frame of a blast door. Ezra slammed his fist into the control; the droid in the lead got one arm through before the doors slammed shut on it, leaving them with a twitching metal arm in front of them. Hera turned and fired into the control panel, then leaned against the wall, breathing hard.

“That was our only way to get to Kanan,” she said, triggering the holomap on her wrist comm. “And –”

They both flinched as an alarm began to sound. “And I think they know we’re here now,” Hera finished grimly, glancing in the opposite direction. She could still hear a scrabbling sound from the opposite side of the door, the droids trying to get to them, but at least she knew they couldn’t get through it.

“What do we do now?”

Hera glanced around, trying to figure out just that, then looked up. “It might be our only way, but it’s not yours.”

“What?”

She pointed up at the hatch in the ceiling above them, which presumably led to the facility’s ventilation or cooling shafts. “I can’t fit in there, but I bet you can.”

Ezra stared up at it, his expression dubious.

Hera’s breath caught. He wasn’t going to do it – not that she could blame him, this was insane, sending him after Kanan alone was insane –

He swallowed, settling his shoulders determinedly. “I can’t believe I’m doing this,” he said. “Okay. Too late to back out now, right?”

Hera smiled in relief. “Just a little.”

Between the two of them they managed to get Ezra up to the hatch, Hera boosting him up so that he could slide it open. He flung his backpack up inside it, then pulled himself into it, holding on so tightly to the edge that his gloves strained over his knuckles as he peered down at her.

Hera reached behind herself and pulled Kanan’s lightsaber off the back of her belt, holding it up to Ezra. “When you find Kanan,” she said, “give him this. He’ll know what it means.”

Ezra took it tentatively. “That’s not his lightsaber.”

“Yes, it is,” Hera said. “It’s the only one that matters.” She took a deep breath. “Good luck, Ezra. I’ll see you – both of you – on the other side.”

Ezra nodded, his jaw set, then slid the hatch closed again. Hera heard a faint scratching sound from the vent, then it moved off, and she was alone in the Crucible.

The commando droids were still trying to claw their way through the blast door, a sound barely audible over the alarm klaxon. Every Inquisitor in the complex had to know that there were invaders in the Crucible now.

“No turning back now,” Hera muttered under her breath. She had holstered her blasters to help Ezra up into the vent; now she drew them both, cast one last look back at the door, and ran in the opposite direction.

*

The interior of the ventilation shaft was cool and dry, and as soon as the hatch shut behind him Ezra took a moment and put his head down against the rough fabric of his backpack, breathing hard. This was easily the stupidest thing he had ever done, and it left him here, alone in the Crucible. Kanan and Hera had said enough about it that Ezra was sure that this was the last place in the galaxy he actually wanted to be. He could feel it somehow, an inquisitive curl at the very edges of his consciousness that seemed to shiver into nothingness when he reached for it. It wasn’t like a person – not like his perception of Kanan in the Force – but it was definitely something, and Ezra didn’t like it.

He let himself panic for a five count, then raised his head again, shoving the lightsaber into his backpack before he started inching forward, pushing his pack in front of him. The ventilation shaft was a little cramped even for him, and more than once Ezra raised his head too high and knocked it against the ceiling, making him glad for the helmet he was still wearing. He could still hear the sound of the wailing alarm, but up here it was muted and distant, easy to push aside.

Less easy to ignore was the murmur of _you were my brother, I loved you_ that seemed to resonate from the very walls of the building itself. Ezra could feel the hum of lightsabers clashing at a level almost too low to comprehend; when he and Hera had been running through the halls he thought he had seen them at the corners of his vision, a pair of men fighting for their lives and the future of the galaxy, but every time he had looked there had been nothing to see.

He couldn’t see anything now, presumably because he was in a ventilation shaft, but he could still hear them. It was more distant now than it had been before and Ezra set it aside with an effort as he crawled forward, every nerve in his body alert for any sign that his passage had been noted from below. Now and then he heard steps below him, once a snatch of murmured conversation in voices too low for him to make out, but no red lightsabers stabbed up through the floor of the shaft, so he figured that he was probably good.

At least the ventilation shaft was straight, without any surprise turns or cross-shafts. It cut down on the possibility that he would get lost, wander around until he died, and then haunt the place forever. Still a possibility, but less likely. Ezra could work with that for now.

He was aware of the vague certainty that Kanan was somewhere ahead of him, which only grew stronger as he made his way through the shaft, his knees aching from the hard metal. When he reached the next hatch, he hesitated, closing his eyes and listening as hard as he could for the sound of footsteps or voices or _anything_ that would let him know that someone was down there. All he could feel was Kanan and a faint distant whisper of – something. Whatever it was, it seemed to be a long way off, so he pushed it aside.

“Okay,” Ezra muttered to himself after he’d counted out two minutes of silence. He couldn’t even hear the alarm anymore. “Here goes nothing.”

He slid the hatch open and put his head down, looking in all directions to make sure there was no one in sight. Then he dropped his backpack out and followed it down, landing in a crouch with his hand on his energy slingshot. When nothing jumped out at him, he straightened upright, scooping up his backpack and settling it over his shoulders.

He was definitely in some kind of holding area, because the corridor was lined with heavy-looking doors, all of them closed. Ezra made his way down the hallway, looking from side to side and wishing that they were labeled. He reached the end of the corridor and then paused, looking back at the last door he had passed. It felt different, somehow.

He went back to it, shifting his backpack off his shoulder to reach for the manipulator inside, and then stopped, staring at the control pad. It didn’t have any buttons or a key reader or – it didn’t have anything, except a blank pad that was currently glowing red. Ezra knew, without even trying, that his manipulator wasn’t going to work.

This was a prison for Force-users, run by Force-users. The only way to get inside was with the Force.

“Okay,” Ezra muttered to himself, flexing his fingers. “Okay. You can do this. I can do this.” He took a deep breath and laid his hand on the pad, feeling something flex inside his mind. _You want to let me in_ , he thought at the door, as hard as he could. _You’re_ going _to let me in._

The pad turned green.

Ezra snatched his hand back as the door slid open, putting his fingers on his energy slingshot again just in case this was a trap, and looked inside.

Kanan was sitting cross-legged in the exact center of the room, his eyes closed. Both his hands and feet were manacled, connected by a chain strung through a ring in the floor, and there was a heavy-looking collar around his neck that glowed with soft blue lights set at regular intervals. Unlike in Ezra’s vision, his face was bruised; there was dried blood at the corner of his mouth.

“Don’t tell me Lord Vader’s here already,” he said without looking up.

“Uh, sorry,” Ezra said, pulling his helmet off. “Just me.”

Kanan’s eyes snapped open. “What are you _doing_ here?” he demanded, starting to get to his feet before his chains jerked him back down.

“I’m here to rescue you,” Ezra said, digging in his backpack for his manipulator. This, at least was a lock he could pick. “I mean, we all are, but Sabine and Zeb went off to cut the power and Hera and I got separated. Hold still.”

“Hera’s here?” Kanan said, his voice full of disbelief. He rubbed at his wrists as the manacles came free, the ones on his ankles following a moment later. “She’s _here_?”

“Uh, the, uh – collar –” Ezra began, but all Kanan did was reach up and yank at empty air with both hands. It split in two, the lights going dark, and he tossed the pieces aside and stood up.

“Okay,” Ezra said, shoving the manipulator back into his pack. He paused as his fingers bumped against the lightsaber, then pulled it out and offered it to Kanan. “Hera said to give this to you. She said that you’d know what it meant.”

Kanan looked down at the lightsaber. It seemed like a long time before he finally took it, the weight suddenly gone from Ezra’s hand as Kanan turned it over, staring down at the hilt as though he had never seen it before.

“What _does_ it mean?” Ezra had to ask.

Kanan gritted his teeth and put the lightsaber on his belt, turning towards the door. “It means we’re at war. Come on; let’s get out of here.”

*

Hera ran in the exact opposite direction that she wanted to be going, which was towards Kanan.

All she could hear was the sound of the alarm klaxons; she knew that she ought to slow down, to precede more cautiously, but adrenaline kept her moving as quickly as she could, her arms pumping and her breath rasping out. They had arrived in the middle of Mustafar’s night cycle, at least, which meant that most of the Crucible’s inhabitants had probably been sleeping when the alarms had started. Probably. Kanan had told her once that the Crucible didn’t actually keep to the planetary cycle, preferring to keep its trainees on their toes. For all she knew they had arrived in the middle of the Crucible’s lunch hour.

Hera went skidding around a corner, catching herself on the wall as she slipped on the metal floor. The klaxons were too loud for her to tell if there were any approaching footsteps, but she saw a shadow move on the wall ahead of her a moment before an Inquisitor emerged from one of the other cross-corridors.

The Weequay woman seemed too surprised by Hera’s appearance to react immediately, but Hera was already moving, bringing both blasters up to fire. She didn’t wait to see if she had killed the Inquisitors, just turned to keep running, passing closed doors as she did so.

_Please, please don’t let this be the living quarters –_

A shout from behind her briefly rose over the sound of the klaxons. Hera glanced over her shoulder, but didn’t see anyone; that didn’t mean that they weren’t there.

“Blast, blast, blast,” she chanted under her breath, and started trying the doors that she passed, pounding her fist against the control panels. None of them opened, and Hera swore, looked over her shoulder again, and kept running.

Up ahead she saw an open door on her right. Praying that she wasn’t about to launch herself into a room full of Inquisitors, Hera caught the edge of the doorframe to brace herself as she went skidding inside, into what would have been pitch-darkness for a human. She slammed her fist into the control panel to close the door just as she felt approaching footsteps vibrating across the floor.

Breathing hard, she pressed her back against the wall by the door, her hands clasped so tightly on her blasters that they ached. She heard the bootsteps slow as they approached the door and readied herself to fire, knowing that she would only get one chance – and that she could hear more footsteps than a single being could account for, unless it was someone with more than two legs.

“I sense the intruder has gone this way,” said a male voice she didn’t recognize.

“Your senses are rattled.” A woman this time. “Why would anyone go in there?”

“To hide.”

Hera held her breath, raising her blasters to fire as soon as the door opened.

“The intruders want the Hound.” The new voice was the First Inquisitor, sounding faintly bored. “They would not have come this way. You’re both wasting your time.”

Hera let out her breath as the footsteps moved off, slumping back against the wall and rubbing the back of her hand against her face, her blaster barrel cool against her skin when it bumped against her forehead. That had been too close.

She finally turned to look at the room she had ran into, hoping that it had another exit. It was a big, empty space, with char marks on the floor and walls that made her think it might have been a training area – Kanan had occasionally left marks like that in the hold of the _Ghost_ when he had miscalculated one of his _kata_ , though usually they were scrubbed out or repaired before Hera could notice. Hera crossed the room slowly, her blasters raised and her footsteps swallowed up by the klaxon, and was relieved to find another door on the opposite side. She touched the control panel warily, her blaster up and ready to fire as soon as the door opened, but it was just another room, this one lined by consoles whose purpose she couldn’t immediately divine.

Another time she might have stopped to investigate them, but as it was Hera just moved quickly through the room, putting her back against the wall again as she hit the next door control. Another hallway.

She holstered one of her blasters to take her comlink off her belt, saying quietly, “Spectre Four, Spectre Five, come in.”

_“We’re here,”_ Sabine responded immediately. _“We’re in the power center for the complex. I think. It looks like it was designed by the Mining Guild, but only halfway updated to Imperial standard, so it’s a mess in here.”_

“Can you destroy it?”

_“Sure, that’s just a matter of placing the charges in the right spot. Or using all the charges.”_ Sabine hesitated. _“Is Kanan –”_

“Ezra went after him, we got separated. I hope –” Hera drew in her breath. “They’ll be all right.” She said it with more certainty than she really felt; Ezra had only been with her for a few days, not long enough for Hera to have any idea of his capabilities. If it had been Zeb or Sabine, she would have felt far more confident.

She licked her lips. “Blow the power center and get out – set it on a timer if you have to, but destroy it one way or another. Signal Chopper to pick you up in the _Ghost_.”

_“What about you?”_

“I’ll get back to you on that,” Hera said, letting out her breath. “I’ll let you know when I’ve rejoined Ezra and Kanan.”

There was a moment of silence on the other end of the line; it was Zeb who said in his low rumble, _“What if you can’t?”_

“I’m not leaving without Kanan,” Hera said. “You do what you have to do to get out of here alive, but I’m not leaving without him.”

_“Hera –”_

“Spectre Two out.” She lowered her comlink on their protests, looking around the dimly-lit room with its mysterious consoles again. Her head was throbbing from the sound of alarm klaxon, her lekku vibrating a little with their urgency. After a moment, she checked the map of the complex again, trying to work out how far and in which direction she had run.

_Huh_ , she thought, looking at the map. If she was where she thought she was, then there was a way that she could get out after all, and maybe even help Ezra and Kanan.

Hera shut the hologram off and turned back towards the door, her blaster at the ready as she touched the control panel. It slid open to reveal another dimly-lit hallway; Hera licked her lips and started down it, the near miss making her move more cautiously than she had during her wild flight.

There were no security droids or Inquisitors in this part of the complex, or if they had been here they had all gone elsewhere in the chaos. Their absence made Hera’s lekku itch, certain that this was a trap somehow, but if Kanan had escaped – if Ezra had succeeded, and Kanan had gotten out – then maybe they had all gone to deal with him.

_Kanan can take them_ , Hera thought, a little desperately. _If they haven’t hurt him too badly already –_

She had known every inch of his body before he had gone to the Crucible; she had seen the scars he had come back with – the physical ones, not just the damage that the Inquisition had done to his mind and his soul. Hera knew that he had gone on missions while he had been there, with the master he never spoke of, but what had been done to him hadn’t come from that. Hera was an ISB agent, with everything that entailed. She knew what the marks of torture looked like when she saw them.

_Not again. I can’t let them have him again._

She paused at a cross-corridor to check the hologram again, then turned down the wider hallway, quickening her pace a little. It was a relief to see the big double doors in front of her, nearly the same in every Imperial building she had ever been in. Hera touched the door control panel, swore when it flashed a request for a code at her, and dug into her belt-pouch for the explosives she had brought with her. It was easy, routine work to set them; Hera retreated back to the cross-corridor and ducked into the connecting hallway, covering her ears with her hands as she triggered them.

The explosion rattled the building around her, or seemed to, and set off a whole different set of alarms. Hera straightened and ran down the hallway, relieved to see that the doors had been blown off, leaving torn and blacked metal in their wake but the way clear. Once she was past them, she couldn’t help her grin.

Advanced TIE fighters, just like the one that had been rolled out at the Empire Day celebration on Lothal. Finally something she could use.

*

As they ran through the corridors of the Crucible, Ezra was aware that there was something – something _wrong_ about the place. He felt heavy and slow, the tips of his fingers and toes numbed; his whole self seemed to be clouded, blurred, as though if he stayed here too long he would find himself dissolving away into nothing. It took everything he had just to keep up with Kanan, who was loping unerringly ahead of him, barely more than a shadow in the gloomily-lit corridors. All Ezra wanted to do was lay down and – not die. Dying seemed like too much effort. Dissolve away into nothing.

Also there was the fact that Kanan’s legs were a lot longer than his.

“Wait,” Ezra gasped, putting a hand out to brace himself against the nearest wall. He remembered running from Kanan over the rooftops of Capital City what seemed like a lifetime ago, but there was something about this place that seemed to suck all the life and energy out of him.

Kanan paused immediately, looking back at him with a furrow between his brows. In the dim reddish light of the corridor, the bruises on his face made him look sepulchral, skull-like; Ezra wondered suddenly if he could feel it too. Feel – whatever was going on here, whatever was wrong with this place. That shadow closing in on him; everything that made him _him_ , Ezra Bridger, fraying away into darkness and cold.

“I just need a minute,” he added, leaning over with his hands on his knees and trying to catch his breath.

“Okay,” Kanan said, coming back to him and casting a wary glance around.

If there were other Inquisitors around, Ezra hadn’t seen them; the alarm klaxons had stopped a while ago. Ezra wasn’t sure what that meant, if it was a good thing or a bad one. Mostly he was just glad that they weren’t adding to his headache.

“I can – feel something,” he said as Kanan leaned a shoulder against the wall, crossing his arms over his chest. He looked as worn and drawn as Ezra felt. “Something…cold. What is that?”

“It’s the dark side,” Kanan said. “This place – it’s what we call a vergence, somewhere where the Force is exceptionally strong. This one resonates to the dark side. It’s why the Empire built the Crucible here.”

“Okay, but what’s the –”

“Get down!”

Kanan grabbed Ezra’s shoulder and flung him to the floor just as something went whizzing over their heads. Ezra yelped, more in shock than in pain – he’d bitten through his own lip when he hit the floor – and looked up to see another Inquisitor standing at the end of the hallway, the Theelin woman he had seen back on Lothal.

She held her hand out as the lightsaber went flying back towards her, the spinning blades cutting slices out of the walls, floor, and ceiling. Kanan grabbed Ezra and rolled them sideways just as they scraped a charred black mark on the floor where they had been a second earlier.

“Stay out of the way,” Kanan muttered in his ear, then straightened up, cracking his knuckles. “Back for round two, Verity? I told you that you only got one free shot and you’ve already used it up.”

“I don’t need any free shots from you,” the Theelin said, drawing her lightsaber back behind her. It wasn’t like Kanan’s, but was double-ended, with a round guard that encompassed the entire hilt. “They said you used to be good when you were a trainee, but those were just trainees. I am a full Inquisitor.”

Kanan’s grin was cold. He spread his arms, flicking his fingers. “Well, come on then. Let’s find out. And just to make it fair, I won’t even draw my weapon.”

“Fool,” Verity spat, then flung herself at him, her lightsaber sweeping around in a blow that should have taken Kanan’s head off at the shoulders.

Ezra scrambled back as Kanan leaned easily out of the way, barely moving as Verity slashed at him. Then he leapt suddenly, catapulting over Verity’s head and landing in a crouch as she swung around, putting her back to Ezra. “Coward!”

“Coward? Maybe once. Not anymore.”

Ezra pushed himself up, pulling back the release on his energy slingshot. Verity was so focused on Kanan that she didn’t seem to have even noticed him. She was still swinging at Kanan, who was dodging each blow without apparent effort.

Ezra let fly twice in each succession, the energy bolts dissipating across Verity’s armor. She was startled enough that she glanced over her shoulder; Kanan took advantage of her distraction to punch her in the face.

What happened next was an exchange of blows that passed too quickly for Ezra to keep track of, not until somehow Kanan had Verity’s lightsaber in one hand, pressing her back against the wall with the blade a bare few inches from her throat.

“When will you people remember that I’m a full Inquisitor too?” he said, sounding genuinely curious, then deactivated the lightsaber and slammed the hilt into the side of her head with a hollow _clonk_ ing sound that made Ezra wince. As she slid unconscious to the floor, Kanan turned to Ezra and said, “If she was down here, then the others will be too. They’ll turn the trainees out.”

“Why?” Ezra asked as they started running down the corridor again, leaving Verity behind them.

“Protocol. And prestige.” He shrugged. “And they probably think it counts as good – blast!”

He came skidding to a halt, igniting both blades of the lightsaber he was still holding. Ezra heard the now-familiar scrape of metal as more commando droids came swarming down the corridor at them, vibroswords sweeping in towards Kanan. Ezra ducked back as Kanan waded in amongst them, his stolen lightsaber a red blur that sent droid parts flying in all directions – a head bounced off the wall by Ezra’s shoulder. The last droid Kanan didn’t even bother swinging at, just clenched his free hand into a fist, so that it compacted suddenly into a tight ball of metal that threw off a few blue sparks before it fell to the ground.

“I hope there aren’t droidekas down here,” Kanan said, the hollows of his face illuminated by the red blades in his hand. He looked suddenly exhausted and worn, the bruises seeming to have darkened since Ezra had found him. “I’d hate to have to –”

The whole world shook.

Ezra found himself on his knees a moment later, coughing from the dust that rose from the hallway, blinking in the pitch-darkness. For a moment the only other sound he could hear was the raw scrape of Kanan’s breathing, rasping out in sharp panic that Ezra could feel at the very edges of his mind. There was a sharp whisper of something that he couldn’t identify, and a coldness on his face that he knew somehow didn’t come from the corridor – that came from somewhere else, something that wasn’t real. Yet.

_Something’s coming_ , Ezra realized, with the sudden certainty that he sometimes had about easy marks in the street. _Not now, but sometime soon. A shadow –_

As if summoned by the thought, he heard a whisper that seemed to come from nowhere and everywhere all at once.

_You have allowed this dark lord to twist your mind until now – until now you have become the very thing you swore to destroy._

_Don’t lecture me. I see through the lies of the Jedi. I do not fear the dark side as you do._

“There’s someone here,” Ezra gasped.

Kanan ignited his lightsaber with a hiss, the blade illuminating the space and dyeing everything it touched a bloody scarlet. “They’re not real,” he said quietly. “Not anymore.”

“What?”

“What you’re hearing is a memory,” Kanan said. “Something that happened a long time ago to someone else.”

“Who?” Ezra demanded, stepping closer to him and kicking a droid arm out of the way.

Kanan hesitated for a moment, then admitted reluctantly, “Two Jedi Knights who dueled each other to the death here. Something like that…it leaves an imprint on the Force. For lack of a better term we call them ghosts.”

There was another muffled explosion, making Ezra flinch and Kanan grimace. “Sabine?” he said.

“Yeah,” Ezra said, distracted by the whisper in his skull. _If you’re not with me, then you’re my enemy._

“Then we need to get out of here before the whole place collapses,” Kanan said. “Come on!”

They ran down the corridors, Ezra following the glow of Kanan’s stolen lightsaber. Any other security droids or Inquisitors must have been occupied trying to find the source of the explosions, which continued at intermittent intervals that grew further and further away each time. Ezra took this as a sign that Sabine and Zeb were still alive; he hoped that Hera had found another way out.

Kanan came to a halt in front of a set of closed doors, frowning for a moment before he reached for the control pad. “There should be a landing pad this way, if I remember right –” He swore when the door didn’t respond; the control panel was dead, without so much as a spark of electricity in it.

“What do we do now?” Ezra demanded, feeling panic rise in his throat. He had barely been aware of the whispers while they were running, but they were coming back now, an endless loop of pain and heartbreak that tore at the inside of his mind.

_Don’t make me kill you._

Kanan didn’t answer, just deactivated one blade of his lightsaber and stepped over in front of the door. He thrust the remaining blade into it, carving out a circle large enough for both of them to pass through, then drew the lightsaber out with a flourish and shoved his free hand forward. The circle he had cut out went flying, scraping across metal with a screech that made Ezra wince.

“There’s always a way, kid,” he said.

Ezra scrambled out, blinking in the sudden light. When they had been in the _Ghost_ making their approach he had thought that Mustafar looked utterly hellish, something out of a nightmare; from here it didn’t look any better. The door had debouched onto a walkway that led out to an attached landing pad with a Lambda shuttle parked on it, but it ran over a river of lava which threw up gouts of the stuff every few seconds, splashing against the glowing blue shields that protected the walkway and the buildings behind them.

Neither the lava or the ship was what caught Ezra’s attention, though.

There was an Inquisitor standing on the walkway, a big green-skinned Nautolan male who watched their approach with an unblinking gaze. He had Kanan’s lightsaber hung from a hook on his belt. As Ezra stared at him, horrified, he reached over his shoulder and pulled his own round-hilted lightsaber off his back, igniting one blade in a streak of red plasma.

Kanan put a hand on Ezra’s shoulder and pushed him gently back. “I’ll handle this,” he said.

“Yeah,” Ezra said quickly. “No problem.”

Kanan walked past him, stepping out onto the walkway. He came to a stop only a few paces away from the Nautolan, the unlit Inquisitor’s lightsaber still in his hand.

“So,” said the Nautolan. “Your friends have come for you. Is it the trials you fear? Or is it the truth of what you are, the secret you sought to keep hidden from your masters? Is that what you fear, Jedi?”

_Jedi?_ Ezra thought, staring. _But the Empire killed all the Jedi…_

“I’m not afraid of the trials and I’m not afraid of you,” Kanan said. “Not anymore.”

The Nautolan tipped his lightsaber up. Kanan didn’t even look at it. “When the Hunter brought you here, you feared what you were. You knew what the fate of your kind was, and you feared it. That is why you are what you are now – a traitor to your people, and now to mine. I told the Hunter that this would happen, but he thought that he could make another just like him. I see he was wrong.”

“No,” Kanan said. “He was right. When the Hunter was done with me I would have crawled over broken glass for him. He got exactly what he wanted from me.” Without breaking the Nautolan’s gaze, he tossed the lightsaber he was still holding over the side of the walkway, where it landed in the lava and vanished.

Kanan reached down and pulled the other lightsaber off his belt, the one that Ezra had given him – the one that Hera had handed him and said, _he’ll know what it means._

“The Hunter’s not here now,” Kanan said, and ignited the lightsaber.

Ezra hadn’t known they came in colors.

*

The Whip stood looking at him for what felt like a long time, though in actuality it couldn’t have been more than a few seconds.

All the whispers, all the ghosts of Mustafar, had stopped the instant that Kanan had made his decision. He could feel the truth of what he was stretching out into the Force, the darkness he had lived in for so long suddenly made bright. The lightsaber he had barely touched in more than a decade fit as naturally into his hand now as it had the day he had made it, in the twilight of the Republic before the long night had fallen on the Jedi.

“Then I will do what the Hunter could not,” said the Whip, igniting the second blade on his lightsaber as the guard snapped down across his wrist. “You will not be the first Jedi to die on my blade.”

Kanan brought his lightsaber up in a salute, the blue blade humming in front of him. “You can try,” he said, and attacked.

He and the Whip met each other in a grinding crackle of plasma that sparked as the blades slid against each other before disengaging. Kanan had never dueled the Whip before, had never seen him fight – had never even seen him ignite his lightsaber. There was, he discovered very quickly, a reason that it was the Whip who had been permanently assigned to Mustafar to train new Inquisitors.

Kanan ducked the blow the Whip swept at him, lightsaber whistling over his head, and lashed forward only to have the stroke blocked. He leaned out of the way of the punch the Whip threw, coming up in a kick that knocked the Nautolan back for only an instant before he recovered himself and slammed forward, Kanan barely getting his own lightsaber up in time. Blue and red blades met between them, energy crackling between them before Kanan disengaged and tossed himself into a backflip, bouncing off the tips of his fingers to come up with his lightsaber in a guard position.

He could feel Ezra behind him, a bright spark in the Force, and he knew that whatever happened he couldn’t let the Whip have him. He should never have had to come here, Kanan had never wanted it, but it was too late to do anything about that now. It was left to Kanan to deal with his presence.

The Whip came at him again, lightsaber raised high; Kanan dodged out of the way of his downward blow and slammed a kick into his knee that staggered him long enough for Kanan to stretch out his free hand. His other lightsaber, the one which he had rebuilt in the Crucible and with which he had killed more people than he could remember, pulled free of the Whip’s belt and leapt into his hand.

Kanan ignited it in time to block the Whip’s next stroke with both lightsabers, red and blue, then disengaged and swept around, landing a stinging cut across the Whip’s ribs that laid open his black armor. For an instant alone he caught a flicker of the Whip’s surprise and pain in the Force – it must have been a long time since anyone had done that – then Kanan thrust both hands forward and shoved with the Force, sending the Whip skidding backwards along the walkway. Kanan leapt at him before he could get his balance back and the Whip barely got his lightsaber up to block Kanan’s first stroke; the second hamstrung him.

The Whip cried out, more in surprise than in pain, staggering as his right leg collapsed under him. He tried to get his lightsaber up again, but Kanan’s next blow cut it into uneven halves, the blades flickering out of existence as the broken hilt came apart in the Whip’s hands. Kanan crossed his blades in front of him, red and blue overlaid and illuminating the Whip’s green skin.

The Whip looked up at him with unreadable black eyes, his breath coming out in harsh, pained gasps. “How much is left of the Jedi, Hound?” he said. “What remains of the pup our Hunter dragged back to his kennel?”

“Not enough,” Kanan said, and took his head off.

His head fell backwards into the lava below them even as his body slumped sideways onto the walkway. Kanan stared down at him, his heart pounding painfully in his chest, and felt something uncurl inside him that might have been relief. _It’s over._

The thought had barely crossed his mind when he heard the familiar scream of a TIE fighter’s engines cutting far too close for comfort. Kanan whirled, raising his lightsabers and preparing himself to go head to head with a starfighter.

For a moment he thought the planet’s fumes had gone to his head as the TIE settled into a hover beside the walkway. Then he grinned in delight as the hatch popped open, Hera waving frantically at him from inside.

Kanan deactivated his lightsabers and hooked one of them back onto his belt, shouting, “Kid! Our ride’s here!”

Ezra was already trotting up the walkway towards him, his gaze flicking towards the Whip’s body before he looked back at the TIE and then did a double-take as he recognized Hera. She edged the TIE a little closer to the walkway as Kanan said, “Can you make that jump or do you need a boost?”

Ezra narrowed his eyes, apparently weighing the distance between the walkway and the TIE. “I can – look out!”

Kanan spun, igniting the lightsaber he was still holding in time to block the Hangman’s downwards blow. “Ezra, go!” he yelled, disengaging and slamming a kick up into the Inquisitor’s solid chest. The Hangman snarled and swung at him again; Kanan ducked the lightsaber blow and nearly blundered straight into Patience’s stroke.

His second lightsaber flew off his belt and into his hand as he swept both blades sideways, scarlet plasma crackling against blue and red. He disengaged an instant later, flipping back across the blades as both Patience and the Hangman swept in at once, slamming a kick into the Hangman’s shin and sweeping a stroke at him that he barely managed to dodge. Patience flung herself at him and Kanan turned so that her lightsaber came within kissing distance of his cheek, flicking his blade out so quickly that it scored a line across the front of her armor.

She shrieked and leapt back, naked fear showing in her eyes before one of her droids launched itself off her shoulder at him. It landed on his forehead and he yelled in surprise, stumbling backwards before the Force screamed a warning and he leaned backwards just in time for the Hangman’s blow to take the droid off his face. Kanan spun, parrying the Hangman’s next stroke with one blade and then lunging forwards, the Hangman only barely managing to dodge it.

Laserfire raked the walkway, sending all three of them stumbling as the walkway shook under the impact of the repeated blasts. Kanan saw Hera’s TIE out of the corner of his eye, angling for the best shot that wouldn’t put him in danger – Ezra just behind her in the viewport; he’d gotten aboard, then.

Kanan slammed his hands outwards, sending Patience and the Hangman flying in opposite directions. The Hangman hit the side of the Lambda parked on the landing platform and crumpled, while Patience nearly went skidding off the walkway itself, barely managing to catch herself on its edge.

“Caleb!”

He turned back towards the entrance to the Crucible to see Barriss Offee running towards him, both her lightsabers ignited.

She and Kanan met in a furious clash of energy that reverberated through the Force, lightsabers glancing off each other before they skidded apart. Kanan didn’t have time to catch his breath before Barriss was on him again, all four of their lightsabers moving so quickly that even his Force-enhanced vision couldn’t see anything other than blurs. The damaged walkway swayed beneath them, both of them compensating for the motion as punches, kicks, elbows, and knees were all added to the duel, Barriss raking her nails across the unprotected left side of his neck and Kanan slamming a knee up into her ribs.

Lightsabers met between them with a crackle, their blades straining against each other as the Force flexed between them. Kanan met Barriss’s blue eyes over their joined blades, their hands only a few centimeters apart with the weight of the Force made nearly corporeal between them. Behind him, he was just barely aware of the familiar sound of the _Ghost_ ’s engines, someone – Zeb? Sabine? – yelling his name.

“You know they’ll come for you,” Barriss said, her voice low but clear. “You earned your name on a Hunt. You know how this ends.”

Kanan didn’t have a chance to reply before Barriss disengaged their joined lightsabers and slammed her hands forward. He went flying backwards, the Force rising up around him in a dark wave, and knew nothing more.


	20. Haunt

_Four years ago_  
_Naboo, Mid Rim_

“Syndulla.”

“I’m busy,” Hera said automatically, not looking up from the opaque holoscreen in front of her as she typed.

_– subject transferred sums in excess of thirty billion credits to twenty-three separate accounts on Muun, Taris, Scipio, Nal Hutta –_

“ _Syndulla_ ,” Markus Anjali repeated, leaning forward with his elbows on the short divider separating their cubicles – an aggravating shape out of the corner of her eye. “Come on, whatever you’re working on can’t be that important.”

“Do you want to bet?” Hera said, but since Markus was unlikely to go away if she kept ignoring him she saved her document and turned to face him. “What?”

Markus smiled sweetly. He was a dark-skinned human male about her own age, though he hadn’t been in her class at the ISB Academy. He was striking even in ISB grays, his curly hair pulled back and barely contained beneath his uniform cap; Hera knew from locker room gossip that he was generally considered the handsomest man in the Naboo Imperial Complex. She supposed that was probably true, but she had seen better. “You hear the rumor?”

“No.” _And I don’t care, either_ , she barely restrained herself from adding; Markus, Cado San Mara, and Leshan Caelan were the only other agents here that actually spoke to her without ulterior motives, and she didn’t want to cut ties with Markus by being ruder than usual. Though at this point she supposed he was used to it.

Hera had been back on Naboo for almost a year – it would be exactly a year next week. The reason Agent Beneke had given her had been something about internal bureaucracy making the higher-ups reluctant to put her in the field solo after what had happened with Kanan; Hera frankly had given up on caring a long time ago. She knew that the chances she would be allowed back into the field were slim, though on the other hand it wasn’t as though the Bureau exactly had a lot of other Twi’lek agents. There was a Togruta woman who had graduated the Academy the year after Hera, though, and Hera supposed that she could do anything that Hera could without carrying the stigma of having had her civilian partner executed by Darth Vader. Even if that wasn’t what had happened.

Markus ignored her grumpy response and leaned forward into Hera’s cubicle, making her eye the divider warily in case it collapsed under his weight. “You’re not even curious?”

“No,” Hera said shortly, but since he didn’t seem inclined to go away anytime soon, she relented to add, “What rumor?”

Markus grinned in satisfaction at having gotten a response out of her, making Hera roll her eyes. He lowered his voice dramatically and said, “We’re finally going after Count Ghoshal.”

“Is that it?” Hera said. “I thought it was going to be something interesting.”

Aggrieved at her reaction, Markus let out his breath and said, a little petulantly, “You’re supposed to be happy. We wouldn’t even know about him if it wasn’t for you.”

_And Kanan_ , Hera thought, glancing back at her screen, where her cursor was blinking at the end of the last sentence she had written. The op that had uncovered Count Ghoshal’s plot to secede from the Empire with a confederation that at last count had included thirty systems had been one of the first two-person operations they had been assigned. It had also been the first time they had slept together.

A year. Next week Kanan would have been gone for a year. Hera had given up on hoping that he was going to come back; she had no way to contact the Inquisition to find out if he was even still alive, and she thought – she was almost certain, now, that he wasn’t going to come back. She had walked him into his grave and she would have to live with that for the rest of her life.

She licked her lips, not looking at Markus, and made herself say dryly, “I’m thrilled.”

“You don’t sound thrilled,” he pouted.

“I’m not going to be in on the op,” she said, going for the simplest explanation. It even had the benefit of being true.

“You don’t know that.”

“I haven’t been in the field for a year, Markus. The Bureau’s not going to change that now, not on an op this big.” Hera turned her attention back to her screen, starting to type again. It was actually less than a year, since the reason the Bureau had finally taken her out of the field permanently had been because she had broken another agent’s nose when he got handsy on an op, during the brief period when she had been working out of the Naboo offices instead of just in them. She didn’t feel like reminding Markus of that, since it didn’t exactly speak well of her professionalism. Even Agent Beneke had told her that she had overreacted. He had also told her that maybe she ought to have taken Agent Serpico up on his offer instead of punching him in the face, since it was obvious that her biology was starting to get the better of her.

Hera had gotten better propositions than that in Outer Rim cantinas, and those hadn’t even been from her coworkers in the middle of an operation.

Markus rapped his knuckles against the top of the divider to get her attention again. “Hey, Syndulla, you don’t know that,” he said. “Your field record’s solid, that’s no secret.”

Hera just looked at him. “I wasn’t in the field solo, Markus.”

Before he could respond, there was a _ping_ from her computer. Hera looked back at her screen, bringing up her personal communications inbox. For a moment she just stared at the newly arrived message, then she almost fell over herself turning off her computer and digging her bag out from beneath her desk. Her hands were shaking as she unlocked the drawer where she kept her blaster.

“Syndulla?” Markus said, baffled.

“I have to go.” Hera slid her blaster into its holster and slammed the drawer closed as she stood up, slinging her bag over her shoulder.

“Where?”

“Away.”

She left a bewildered Markus behind her, her bootheels clicking on the floor as she made her way through the bullpen to the nearest turbolift. There were only a few other agents working today; a few of them glanced up at her passage, but no one tried to stop her or asked her where she was going. Hera waited until she was in the turbolift before she took her comlink off her belt. “Chopper?”

It took a moment for him to reply, but when he did it was grumpy and cautiously hopeful. He had been banned from the ISB offices a week into her assignment planetside, which meant that he spent most of his time either in her tiny rented apartment or in the ISB hangar where the _Ghost_ had been moldering for the past year. Hera only hoped that he had left the ship in one piece. She was about to need it.

“Yes, it’s really me,” Hera reassured him, watching the floor numbers tick down as the turbolift descended. “Get the _Ghost_ ready; I’ll meet you at the hangar.” She took a deep breath. “We’re going to go get Kanan.”

*

_Present day_

“Kanan!”

Hera ignored the last few rungs of the ladder and leapt down, landing heavily on the deck of the _Ghost_ ’s hold before she caught her balance and ran to Kanan and Zeb. Ezra and Sabine followed her, though they hung back as Hera dropped to her knees beside Kanan’s limp body, which Zeb had pulled awkwardly into his lap.

His face was bruised, but aside from that he didn’t look like he had been badly hurt; Hera couldn’t see any other fresh wounds. His eyes were shut, but his pulse was steady under Hera’s fingers as she put a hand to his neck. He just wasn’t conscious.

“What happened?” she demanded as Zeb shifted so that she could start fumbling Kanan’s armor off; the Inquisition either hadn’t removed it or he had gotten it back at some point. “He was fine when I saw him –”

He had been fighting the First Inquisitor when more TIEs had come roaring up and Hera had had to draw them away from the duel on the walkway, Ezra hanging grimly on to the back of the pilot’s seat despite the chaos of the dogfight. She still wasn’t entirely sure how Kanan had gotten aboard the _Ghost_ , just that Zeb and Sabine had reported they’d gotten him and they had to get out of there, now. Hera had barely managed to dock the TIE with the _Ghost_ before they had gotten clear of Mustafar’s gravity well and jumped to hyperspace with half the Mustafar fleet on their tail.

Zeb looked up at Sabine, who was peering worriedly over Hera’s shoulder. “That witch he was fighting threw him in here,” he said, sounding a little doubtful about this himself. “Maybe she was aiming for the lava and missed.”

“The First?” Hera said, getting Kanan’s pauldron off and tossing it aside with a dull clunk. She ran her hands over Kanan’s body, searching for a wound, but there was nothing.

Zeb shrugged. “Skinny broad in black with two lightsabers.”

“The First Inquisitor,” Hera confirmed.

“He came in so fast that he hit the back door.” He gestured at it; Hera followed this and blinked at the dent that hadn’t been there before. “I thought maybe he’d hit his head or something, but…” He shook his head.

Hera rested a hand on Kanan’s chest just so she could feel his heart beating. “He’ll be all right,” she said, more to herself than the others. “He always is.”

The Inquisition hadn’t had him for long this time. They couldn’t have done anything too awful to him in that short a span, or he wouldn’t have been capable of doing what he had been doing when Hera had caught up with them outside the complex. He just…just needed a few minutes or a few hours to recover, that was all. He was _fine_.

Hera swallowed painfully. “Will you help me get him up to my cabin?” she asked Zeb.

He nodded solemnly and straightened up, picking Kanan up carefully as Hera released him. She barely remembered to collect Kanan’s lightsabers from the floor as she followed him to the ladder; he would want those when he woke up. Because he was going to wake up.

He had to wake up. He had just hit his head or something; he would be fine. He always was.

“Hera,” Ezra said in a low voice as she started to follow Zeb to the ladder.

She turned back towards him, her grip tightening on the lightsabers. “What is it?”

“The Inquisitor – the one he killed, the Nautolan, he said –” He hesitated for a long moment, looking like he was trouble putting the thought into words. Finally he finished, “He said Kanan was a Jedi.”

“What?” Sabine and Zeb both looked back at them, Zeb shifting his grip on Kanan.

“The Jedi are all dead,” Sabine said. “The Empire wiped them out years and years ago.”

Hera lifted one of Kanan’s lightsabers – the blue one, not the red one. The one he had hidden away for years, the one she had given back to him. “Not all of them,” she said. “Not anymore.”

*

_Four years ago_

Hera didn’t bother going back to her apartment, just went straight from the Imperial Complex to the hangar where the _Ghost_ was stored. It was ISB-owned but off-site, far enough away from the Complex that Hera had to take the inner-city maglev tram rather than walk. It was an odd hour of the day and there weren’t many people on the tram, so Hera managed to get a seat, bundling her bag onto her lap and staring blankly out the opposite window as they sped silently over the streets of Theed. When she had been a cadet she had never really left the Imperial Complex except on training missions, so she hadn’t gotten much chance to see the city; this past year, living in it, she had at least gotten that opportunity.

She debarked the tram at the next stop, ignoring the curious stares she always got – Theed might have had a diverse population, but no one was used to seeing a Twi’lek in Imperial uniform – and left the station, heading for the spaceport a block away.

There were other ISB ships stored here, but the only beings that Hera saw were the discreet guards just inside the doors, after she had swiped into the building. They nodded to her as she showed off her badge, but didn’t ask what she was doing here, for which Hera was grateful. She wasn’t certain what she would have said in response.

The lights were on and the _Ghost_ ’s ramp was down when Hera swiped into the hangar bay. As she crossed to the ship, Chopper emerged at the top of the ramp and waved one arm at her, beeping something that managed to sound at least partially friendly.

“Nice to see you too,” Hera said. She hesitated at the base of the ramp, looking up at Chopper and the hold behind him, brightly lit and still familiar even after months away. Hera hadn’t been able to bring herself to even visit the _Ghost_ lately, too resigned to her current assignment in the Bureau. She kept expecting to wake up one morning to the news that the _Ghost_ had been assigned to someone else. There hadn’t seemed to be any point in torturing herself with what she couldn’t have.

She took a deep breath and made her way up the ramp, looking around the hold. It didn’t look as if it had been touched since the last time she had been here, though that didn’t mean anything – Chopper had told her before that the ISB searched the ship regularly. Hera had moved Kanan’s – Kanan’s things, the lightsaber and the pretty gold and blue cube, after she had been reassigned to Naboo, knowing that a search of the ship was protocol; she had asked Chopper to hide them where no one could find them. She would have to tell him to put them back before they arrived on Mustafar. They were Kanan’s. He would want them.

“The ship is fueled up?” she asked Chopper, hesitating at the base of the ladder. “The engines are fine? Everything’s fine?”

He responded in the affirmative, probably wondering why she was delaying, and Hera sighed, silently asking herself the same question. It wasn’t as though she enjoyed being stuck in an office all day. She didn’t even get to fly a speeder – she had thought about renting one so that she didn’t have to take the tram, but that had seemed self-indulgent, a waste of her money.

Hera wasn’t stupid. She knew that she had been punishing herself, even if she didn’t want to think about it that way.

She sighed and hit the control to close the ramp behind her, then started up the ladder to the cockpit. Everything looked exactly the same as it had been the last time she had been here, when all she had done was sit in her cabin and stare at the wall. She had only come to pick up some of the clothes she had left behind, but once she had sat down she hadn’t wanted to leave. She had just wanted to curl up on her bunk and die there, which had seemed utterly preferable to another miserable day in her apartment, in the office, utterly alone.

It was going to be better, Hera told herself firmly, slinging her bag into the empty co-pilot’s seat and starting up the _Ghost_ ’s engines. She was going to get Kanan, and once she had him back – once she had him back, what had happened before wouldn’t matter anymore. He would be an Inquisitor and an Imperial officer, and they would be equal. Everything would go back to the way it had been, except better, because there wouldn’t be any more secrets.

The _Ghost_ responded easily and comfortably under her hands, and Hera felt a tiny knot of tension in her chest relax. She took the ship straight up into the open air, her whole body relaxing into her seat, into the controls, as she turned her ship away from Theed and upwards along one of the city’s departure vectors. She hadn’t realized until now how much she had missed flying.

Naboo fell away beneath them as they passed through the atmosphere and out into space. Hera couldn’t help grinning, her hands flexing on the controls as she waited for the navicomputer to calculate the hyperspace coordinates. She was back in the sky and she was going to go get Kanan and then – and then everything would be better. They would be better.

She couldn’t see how it could possibly get worse.

*

_Present day_

“Now what?”

Hera raised her head from Kanan’s, blinking up at Sabine. She, Zeb, and Ezra were crowded in the entrance to Hera’s cabin, with Chopper just visible behind their legs. “Now – what?”

She kept checking Kanan’s pulse, making sure that his heart was still beating, that he was still breathing. When she had stripped his clothes off, she had been relieved to see that although he had clearly been knocked around, he hadn’t been badly injured; there didn’t seem to be anything wrong with him but bruises and shallow cuts. He just wasn’t waking up.

Sabine and Zeb glanced at each other, then Sabine said, her voice low and careful like she was standing in a sickroom, “We’re in hyperspace, headed nowhere in particular – I just plugged in the first coordinates I could think of. Three days ago we worked for the Empire. What do we do now?”

_Kanan would know_ , Hera thought, looking down at his still face and brushing a loose strand of his hair away from his forehead. She knew that Kanan had spent the better part of eight years on his own, living on the fringes of the galaxy; she knew that he had had a plan in place the time he had asked her to run away with him five and a half years ago. Hera knew more or less how those fringes operated, knew the ramshackle spaceports and space stations that catered to every sort of vagabond, wanderer, and criminal in the galaxy; she and Kanan had certainly spent enough time bouncing between them during that first year together, when she had been a junior agent and he had been the gunslinger she had picked up on a whim. Afterwards…after Mustafar, it had been harder for him, and they had spent more time in uniform than out of it. But he still knew it. Hera had only ever been a visitor, confident in the weight of the Empire behind her, of Agent Beneke’s patronage. She had never had to depend on that knowledge to survive.

“Hera?” Sabine said when she didn’t answer.

“What coordinates?” Hera made herself ask.

Sabine looked a little reassured by the fact that Hera had responded. “An uninhabited system in the Outer Rim; Chopper had the coordinates. No name, just a numerical designation.” 

“That sounds fine,” Hera said, staring down at Kanan’s still face. “Let me know when we come out of hyperspace.”

“Okay,” Sabine said hesitantly. She and Zeb exchanged another look before she went on, “What about now?”

Hera lifted her hand away from Kanan’s face to touch her own forehead, forcing herself to think. “I need you and Chopper to do a deep scan of the _Ghost_ ,” she said at last. “Go over every inch of it. This is – this _was_ – an ISB ship and I don’t know if I found all the listening devices and trackers that the ISB planted. Actually, I know I didn’t. And –” She hesitated for a long moment, but she had made her choice the moment she had taken Kanan’s lightsaber from its hiding place, and there was no going back now. “Scrub everything Imperial off the ship’s computers,” she said. “Keep the data, partition it off or put it on external drives if you think you have to, but there shouldn’t be anything Imperial left that a deep scan will reveal. And – and make sure you change the transponder signal,” she added, even though she was sure that was the first thing they would do. “After what happened at Mustafar, no Imperial ship will let us through the lines again.”

“You know the _Ghost_ best,” Zeb said. “Shouldn’t you –” His gaze went to Kanan, limp in Hera’s lap, and he let the words trail off.

Hera shook her head. “I know the ship too well,” she said. “Everything that’s on it…everything that’s on it has been there since Agent Beneke –” Her voice caught at his name, and Hera thought, automatically, _he’ll be so disappointed in me_. Disappointed the way he had been when Hera had taken Kanan into her bed. Disappointed the way he had been when Hera had spent a year at a desk on Naboo after Kanan had gone to Mustafar, when internal Bureau politics had kept her out of the field. Disappointed the way he had been when Hera had taken Kanan back.

She made herself go on. “Since Agent Beneke gave it to me six years ago,” she finished. “I don’t know what isn’t supposed to be here. You don’t have that problem.”

Zeb nodded solemnly in response. He stepped back, Sabine and Ezra starting to follow him before Hera said, “Ezra – will you wait a moment, please?”

Ezra glanced at the others, then hung back. Chopper made as if to do so too, before Hera said, “They’re going to need you for the scans,” and in response he beeped something that managed to sound both annoyed and concerned before rolling off after Zeb and Sabine.

The door slid shut behind Ezra as he stepped further into the room, closer to the bunk where Hera sat with Kanan in her lap. She rested her hand on Kanan’s chest, his pulse steady against her palm, and said to Ezra, “Can you sense him?”

He looked her as if she had asked if he could hear colors. “Can I – what?”

“Back at Mustafar you felt him down in the Crucible,” Hera said, searching for the words. “Can you do that now?” Her knowledge of the Force was academic only; Kanan had explained it to her once or twice, but she had thought then, and now, that it was something only another Force-user could really understand. Words in Basic like “feel” or “sense” couldn’t sum it up, just translate it into concepts that were just barely comprehensible to the Forceblind. Not that Kanan had ever put it that way, of course.

Ezra gave her a confused look. “But Kanan’s right here,” he said.

“I know,” Hera said, and beneath her palm she felt his heart beating. “I mean – I know his body is here. But I don’t know if his mind is. Can you sense it?”

“You know I don’t actually know what I’m doing,” Ezra said slowly. “Or – anything. About any of this.”

“But you can do it,” Hera said. “I can’t.”

He gave her an uncertain look and ventured a little closer to the bunk, standing over them with his hand outstretched – his fingers just above, but not quite touching, Kanan’s forehead. Hera watched him shut his eyes, his face scrunching up in concentration, and tried – as she had tried before – to feel anything at all. But for her there was nothing but the distant rumble of the ship’s engines and the purr of the hyperdrive, the soft sound of the three breaths in the room – Kanan’s slow and steady, Ezra’s a little quick from nerves, Hera’s feeling as though it was tearing at her own throat. For a moment she thought she felt Kanan’s heartbeat stutter beneath her palm, as though he had been startled by something, but an instant later it was back to normal.

She didn’t know how long it was until Ezra finally dropped his hand back to his side and opened his eyes again, giving her an apologetic look. He looked strained from the effort, sweat beginning to bead up at his hairline and his hands trembling a little.

“He’s there,” he said. “But he’s also…” He hesitated, searching for the words. “He’s somewhere else too,” he finished finally. “I think he’s going to come back, though. He was just…hurt. Whatever that woman did to him. But he’ll come back,” he added, more firmly this time.

“Thank you,” Hera said, leaning up so that she could catch his shoulder in her hand. He shrugged, looking pleased. “And thank you for going after him back on Mustafar. You didn’t have to do that.”

Ezra shrugged again, but just said, “What was I going to do, back out?”

“You could have,” Hera said.

“Didn’t seem like a good idea at the time,” he said. He shifted for a moment, looking awkward, and then said, “I’d better go help the others. But he is going to wake up,” he added quickly. “When he’s ready.”

Hera nodded, and he turned to go. As the door slid shut behind him she leaned over Kanan again, smoothing out his hair with her fingers and trying not to think about the last time she had done this.

*

Ezra left Hera’s cabin, but didn’t take the few steps that would bring him into the cockpit, where he could hear Zeb and Sabine talking to each other, with Chopper’s occasional grumbling interjections. He could hear them – and he could feel them, pale sparks of warmth that dimmed in comparison to Kanan in the other room, but no less real.

Ezra was aware of them now in a way that he hadn’t been before, though in a way he thought that he had always known – he just hadn’t been aware of it. He hadn’t known that he hadn’t known. But now he knew, even if he didn’t know the how or why of it, and that knowledge sat warm inside of him. He felt…not as if he had become someone else, someone knew, but as if he had suddenly become more of _himself_ than he had ever been before.

Ezra wasn’t sure he liked that feeling.

Kanan’s mind had been a series of hallways with closed doors. Ezra hadn’t recognized the building, but he had had the sense that Kanan knew it as intimately as he knew his own body. He also knew, though he couldn’t have said how, that somewhere, sometime, this had been a real place. Ezra stopped by a darkened window and looked out, but even though he tried to clean the filthy glass with his sleeve he couldn’t see out; all he did was smudge it worse. He turned away and kept walking, knowing that while this had been a real place, it no longer existed in any meaningful way. It had been corrupted.

_Like me…_ came a soft whisper, and Ezra stopped where he was, looking around for its source. The voice had seemed to shift even as he had heard it; he wasn’t certain now whether it had been that of a grown man or of someone his own age or younger, whether the accent had been from the Outer Rim or the Core, but he did know that it had been Kanan’s. He was sure of that.

“Kanan?” he called, and in the real world he knew that he hadn’t made a sound, that only seconds had passed when it seemed he had been wandering for much longer here. “Kanan, it’s Ezra. Hera sent me to find you…”

The words echoed all around him, and Ezra let them trail off, shuddering. But up ahead of him he saw a light suddenly appear in the darkened hallway and he hastened quickly towards it, his footsteps heavy on the floor.

The light had come from a door which was only slightly ajar, not enough so that Ezra could see inside. He put his hands out, meaning to pull it the rest of the way open, but instead the doors slid apart as he approached.

From inside had come a warm babble of voices of all tenors and more accents than he had ever heard on Lothal, along with a sharp crackle that he didn’t realize and the snap of wood on wood. Ezra ventured inside, blinking as his eyes adjusted to the sudden light, and found himself standing in a big room filled beings of all ages and species. They were sparring in pairs or larger groups, wielding lightsabers, wooden staffs, or a few other weapons that Ezra didn’t recognize; in a far corner a pair of human men, one wearing black and the other white, were engaged in a flurry of kicks and punches that didn’t seem to let up at any time.

_Jedi_ , he thought, his gaze drawn back to the nearest group, a trio of children a few years younger than him – a human boy, a human girl, and a Twi’lek boy, all watched over by an older woman with her dark hair braided away from her face. The fight seemed to be two on one, the girl and the Twi’lek teamed up on the boy, who was gamely defending himself. All three lightsabers moved so quickly they were little more than blurs, their crackles a little muted.

He dragged his gaze away from them, looking around the room again. Not far away, a pair of teenage girls, a Mirialan in a long black skirt and a Togruta in a backless tunic, were sparring; the Mirialan had a single blue-bladed lightsaber and the Togruta two green-bladed ones. Something about them tugged at Ezra’s memory, but he couldn’t imagine where he might have seen either of them before. All the Jedi were dead. All but one.

When he looked back, Kanan was sitting by the wall beside the door.

Ezra didn’t know if he had always been there or if he had appeared while Ezra had been watching the room, but he was there now, sitting cross-legged with his hands folded in his lap. He was wearing his Inquisitor’s blacks, but the lightsaber on his hip was the one Ezra had given back to him.

“Kanan?” Ezra said, going over to him, and Kanan tilted his head back slightly to look up at him. “I was looking for you.”

He hesitated, then sank down to sit next to Kanan. “Where are we?”

“The Jedi Temple on Coruscant,” Kanan said quietly. “As it used to be.” His gaze went back to the children. “Before the dark times. Before the Empire.”

“It’s gone now?”

“After a manner of speaking,” Kanan said. “It’s the Imperial Palace now.”

Ezra stared at him. “What?”

Kanan didn’t respond, still watching the others. The woman had called a stop to the sparring match and had gathered the children, apparently to tell them what they had done right and what they had done wrong. Kanan’s gaze was fixed on her, his expression longing.

“Who are they?” Ezra asked.

Kanan shut his eyes for a moment, then opened them again and said, “The woman with the braids is my master, Depa Billaba. The boy – the human boy, not the Twi’lek – that’s me. That was me.”

Ezra looked at him sharply, then looked back at the boy, trying to reconcile them. He thought that he could see the long bones of Kanan’s face in the boy’s round cheeks, but otherwise it seemed impossible that someone so small – he thought the kid would only come up to his shoulder, if that – would ever grow up to be Kanan.

“What about the others?”

Kanan dragged his gaze away from Depa Billaba to look around the room. “Dead,” he said, then he glanced at a tall masked figure in white and gold who stood silent in a corner of the room and just as quickly away, shuddering. “Mostly.” He rubbed a hand over his face and said, “What are you doing here, Ezra?”

“I came looking for you,” Ezra said, surprised. “You’re not – back on the _Ghost_ – you’re not waking up. Hera’s freaking out.”

“Oh,” Kanan said, and turned his attention back to the room.

“Are you going to come back?” Ezra had to ask.

Kanan was quiet for a long time, and the only sound was the crackle of lightsabers, the snap of wood on wood, and the slap of fists and feet against each other. Finally, he said, “Yes.”

“But not yet?”

He didn’t respond.

“Okay,” Ezra said slowly. “But – you should. Come back.”

Kanan nodded absently. “I will. I know I can’t live in the past. I just…want to sit here awhile. I haven’t been here for a long time.” He pulled his knees up to his chest and rested his folded arms atop them, and for an instant Ezra saw the child he had been, the boy who only a few meters away was having his fighting stance patiently corrected by the tall dark woman with the braided hair.

Ezra pushed to his feet, aware that in the real world only a few minutes had passed and seeing it start to intrude mistily in around the Temple dojo. He had taken only a few steps in the direction of the door when something occurred to him and he turned back slightly. “Kanan?”

Kanan tilted his head in his direction, his gaze still on the fighters.

“Are you teaching me how to be a Jedi?”

This time Kanan did look around. “If you become a Jedi,” he said, “if you walk down that path – then there will be no turning back. The Empire will hunt you all the days of your life until they catch you and break you, or until they kill you.”

“I’m pretty sure they’re going to do that anyway after today,” Ezra said.

The corner of Kanan’s mouth lifted a little. “You’re right about that,” he said, then hesitated. “Do you _want_ to be a Jedi?”

“Did you?”

“I was born into the Order,” Kanan said. “Or at least I came to it so young that I might as well have been. For us…Jedi is what we _are_. I’m a Jedi as much as I am human, as much as I am alive. More. Jedi are the Force made flesh.” He took a deep breath, then let it out, his shoulders dropping. “I lost my way for a long time. But now…” He flexed his hand, looking down at his scarred knuckles. “Now I have a chance to change things.”

“Well,” Ezra said slowly, “you asked me to come with you before, back on Lothal. And you might not have said anything about the Jedi then, but – that was what you were really asking, weren’t you? Without actually saying it?”

Kanan’s brow furrowed. “I guess I was.”

“Then I guess you have my answer,” Ezra said. He grinned at Kanan, then turned and walked out the door and back into the waking world.

*

“This is insane,” Sabine said, finally finding the slight irregularity in the metal of the console’s underside. She fit the edge of her fingernail under it to break the seal, catching it as it came free – a small circle of plasteel and metal barely the size of her thumbnail. Sliding out from under the console, she tossed it into the bucket with the others she had found and sat up with a groan, flexing her hands and checking the scanner on her gauntlet to make sure that there wasn’t a second bug down there. “This makes what, two hundred and thirty-seven? Thirty-eight?”

“Make that two hundred and forty-six.” Ezra’s voice echoed oddly through the room, making Sabine and Chopper both look up and around before the vent grille swung open and Ezra shimmied out. He dropped to the ground and dumped a handful of electronic chips into the bucket, then stretched his arms up over his head, rising up onto his toes until his back popped. “I thought Hera said she found them all!”

“The _Phantom_ ’s clean now,” Zeb called down, a moment before he descended the ladder and emptied another handful of chips into the bucket. The three of them all looked down at it – ISB surveillance bugs, both audio and visual, of different makes. Sabine recognized a few of them as being at least six years old, presumably dating back to Hera’s first field assignments. The most recent that she could identify was probably from the last year or so, the last time they had swung through an Imperial complex with a dedicated ISB office on-site.

“Chop?” Sabine said. “Anything else?” _Please don’t let there be anything else._ Both her hands and eyes ached from hours of identifying and removing bugs; the entire ship had been wired. Sabine wasn’t sure that there was a square inch of the _Ghost_ that hadn’t been surveilled, including the refreshers, which she was determinedly not thinking about. Including _her_ cabin, for that matter.

“There can’t be anything else,” Ezra said, dropping into a seat and rubbing a hand over his eyes. “Where would it be? We’ve looked everywhere.”

After a long moment, Chopper made a negatory sound. Zeb slumped back against the ladder leading up to the _Phantom_ , and Sabine, still seated on the floor by the console she’d pulled the last chip off of, dragged her hands through her hair and let out a sigh of relief.

“The ISB can’t possibly have a sentient crew going through all of those,” she said. “I mean – not all of it. That’s too much footage, and most of it has to be really boring.”

Zeb grumbled, “Trying not to think about some pencil-pusher on Naboo watching me –”

“Okay!” Ezra said hastily. “Thanks for the mental image, not.”

Chopper had rolled over to the bucket and was prodding them warily with one outstretched arm, but Sabine realized that his scanner was still running. She pushed herself up to her feet and went over to him, saying, “What is it, Chop?”

“If that bucket of bolts says there’s another one of those things out there that we haven’t found –” Zeb began.

Chop grumbled something in binary. “What?” Sabine said, and he repeated it.

“Of course they’re not transmitting!” she said. “We took care of that before we went to Mustafar, and even if we didn’t get them then, then they’re _definitely_ not transmitting now.”

He beeped something again, more pointedly, then suddenly rolled away from her in the direction of the crew quarters. Sabine scrambled after him. “Leave Hera alone!”

As usual, Chopper ignored her, and Sabine lunged at him and missed as the doors to Hera’s cabin opened in front of him. Hera, still seated on the bunk with an unconscious Kanan in her lap, looked up in surprise. “Chopper?”

“Sorry,” Sabine gasped, picking herself up. “I told him not to bother you –”

Chopper ignored her and let out a fast series of beeps, concluding by waving both arms frantically. Hera and Sabine, startled out of her apologies by what he had said, both stared at him. “That doesn’t make any sense,” Sabine said. “Why would all the bugs have stopped transmitting a few days ago? What happened then?”

“Agent Beneke was murdered,” Hera said. “Chop, do you have an exact time?” When he replied, she frowned and said, “Sabine, could you hand me – that datapad, that one there.”

Zeb and Ezra had followed her out of the lounge, and they crowded in the doorway behind her as Sabine passed the indicated datapad to Hera. She frowned at it for a moment, fingers flicking over the surface, and then she said, “He commed me that night. The timestamps – he must have turned all the surveillance off just before he commed me; he didn’t want anyone else at the ISB knowing what he was asking.me. He must have been killed immediately afterwards, before he had a chance to turn them back on.”

“What was he asking about?” Ezra said, sounding baffled.

“An Imperial shipment that was destroyed by rebels,” Hera said. Her gaze dropped to Kanan’s unconscious face, and she laid the datapad aside. “Except it wasn’t rebels. And it was an Inquisition op – it’s the reason Kanan was sent to Lothal, to secure what was in the shipment before passing it on.” She hesitated, smoothing a hand over Kanan’s hair. “He told me that he sabotaged it somehow. Which –” She blinked. “Agent Beneke never turned the surveillance back on. They don’t know Kanan did it – or at least the ISB doesn’t. The Crucible might.”

“What was in it?” Sabine asked, trying to think what might be so terrible that Kanan would have disobeyed his orders to destroy it and coming up blank. “Prisoners?” she hazarded.

“Something called a kyber crystal,” Hera said.

“I’ve never heard of it,” Sabine said. She looked at Ezra and Zeb, but both of them looked equally blank.

“Neither had I, before Kanan told me,” Hera said. “Did you get all the bugs?”

Sabine nodded. “There were a lot of them. Like, a couple hundred.”

“Two hundred and fifty-seven,” Ezra clarified.

Hera blanched, but there was something about the expression on her face that told Sabine she wasn’t particularly surprised by this revelation. “You’re sure they weren’t transmitting?” she asked Chopper, and he warbled an affirmative. “Well, that’s something, at least.”

“So they never trusted us,” Sabine said, surprised at how bitter the words came out. She had given up on the Empire a long time ago, but somehow it still hurt. For all she had thought then and still thought now that Hera was too idealistic, too convinced by Palpatine’s propaganda, it had been nice to be convinced of something – to believe, just for a little while, that the Empire wasn’t as awful as her experiences at the Imperial Academy had led her to assume.

“You really think they ever did?” Zeb said.

Sabine didn’t have an answer to that. “Sorry for bothering you, Hera,” she said, catching Zeb and Ezra by the arms and backing up, hoping that Chopper would get the message. _What are we going to do now?_ was on the tip of her tongue, but she didn’t voice the thought.

Ezra resisted her pull and hung back, staring down at Kanan. “He’s still unconscious?” he said, sounding a little stunned. “He said – I mean –”

Hera just looked at him, and he backed out of the room, his face furrowed in confusion. Chopper followed at Hera’s little shooing gesture, the door sliding shut on her as the rest of the crew decamped to the corridor outside.

“Is that it?” Zeb asked, apparently running down a mental checklist.

“No,” Sabine sighed. “That was just the surveillance. Now we get to deal with the ship’s computers.”

*

Zeb had come in a few minutes earlier to tell Hera that they were dropping out of hyperspace and shutting down all non-essential systems on the _Ghost_ to purge and reboot the ship’s computers, so Hera wasn’t surprised when the lights in her cabin suddenly went out. She blinked in the sudden grayscale of her night vision, passing a hand automatically over Kanan to make sure that he was still breathing, that his heart was still beating. She knew that she ought to get up and join the rest of her crew; the _Ghost_ was her ship, her responsibility. She knew it better than anyone else.

But she also knew her crew and trusted them to do whatever they had to do. At the moment she was deeply distracted, and as much as she wanted to think that she could push all that aside to do whatever needed to be done, she knew that there was a chance that she wouldn’t be able to. There was nothing that she could do on the _Ghost_ right now that her crew wouldn’t be able to do just as well.

Hera bent her head over Kanan again, as though she could shield him from the rest of the darkness. _Wake up_ , she thought. _Please wake up, don’t leave me here alone._

Not alone, not entirely – not with her crew here. But Agent Beneke was dead and she had committed the kind of treason that she could never come back from, and the Empire was closed to her now. The ISB, everything that she had worked for over the past decade – all of it was closed to her now. She had not only slammed that door shut, she had barred it over and then bricked it up. _Agent Beneke will be so disappointed_ , she thought fleetingly and familiarly, and couldn’t help her flush of shame. He had trusted her so much, and the instant he was dead she had betrayed that trust.

Hera rested her hand on Kanan’s chest and looked down at his still face. She couldn’t have lost him, she knew. Not again. And she knew that her career wouldn’t have survived the investigation both Kallus and Markus had promised. Not without Agent Beneke there. Her record should have been able to speak for itself, but when it came to her skin and her headtails, to her species, to her team – she would have been lucky if she had gotten off with another year flying a desk on Naboo. Zeb and Sabine, she knew, didn’t have any second chances left.

_Alone._

The word rang in her head, and Hera squeezed her eyes shut, concentrating on the sound of Kanan’s breath, on his heartbeat beneath her fingers. _Alone_ meant that cell back in the Spire, pacing the tiny room and hoping against hope that Agent Beneke would come back. _Alone_ meant the dormitories in the Imperial Academy on Serenno, surrounded by her peers who would barely speak to her. _Alone_ meant the ISB Academy on Naboo, meant Agent Kallus’s icy disdain and the derision of her classmates. _Alone_ meant the year she had spent working a desk in ISB HQ, the _Ghost_ in storage and her life eked out in reports from missions she had never gone on. On Ryloth, surrounded by her family, Hera had never really known what _alone_ meant. The Empire had taught her that.

She knew that there were people in the Academy who had found a home and a community in the Imperial service, but she hadn’t been one of them. Hera had wanted it – she had wanted it more than almost anything else in her life – but that door had never opened for her no matter how hard she had pushed at it, and when it came down to it, there were some things she just wouldn’t do for the chance of having it open a crack. If she had – if she had, maybe there would be someone she could go to now. Somewhere she could go. But all the favors she had to call in wouldn’t cover this. Nothing the ISB could do would touch the wrath of the Inquisition.

In the darkness of the room, Hera’s gaze went to the communications console.

The _Ghost_ ’s systems had automatically logged the source of the call that Xiaan had made to her, the one that Kanan had been listening in on, and in the immediate aftermath of the battle Hera had made sure to wipe them off the ship’s computers, just in case – just in case what, she hadn’t known at the time. She had meant to delete them entirely, but hadn’t; the logs were still on her comlink. Agent Kallus had never thought to ask for them.

Hera took her comlink off her belt and stared at it. Part of her screamed, _are you an idiot? Run straight from the Empire to the rebels, of all the blasted things?_ But another part of her was, and always would be, that scared fourteen-year-old girl in a prison cell, the one who had wished with all her heart for her mother and her father to come and take her away from here.

_There was a Jedi with Doriah on Lothal. She’ll know what’s wrong with Kanan._

It was an excuse, Hera knew. She turned the comlink over and over in her hand, listening to Kanan’s breath, to his heartbeat, and tried to decide.

“Hey,” Kanan muttered, slurring the words against her thigh. “What happened to the lights?”

“Kanan!” Hera dropped the comlink and helped him sit up, putting an arm around his shoulders as he swayed.

He blinked in the utter darkness of the room, then raised a hand to his eyes, running his fingers over the lids as if checking that they hadn’t fallen out. “What happened to the lights?” he asked again, his voice jerking up in pitch for an instant before dropping to his regular tenor.

“We had to shut down all non-essential systems so that we can purge and reboot the ship’s computers,” Hera told him. “They should be coming back online any minute now.”

His breath rasped out in something that was unmistakably fear, and Hera caught him in her arms, pulling him against her. He came without protest, burying his face in her shoulder as he started to shake. Hera wrapped her arms around him, stroking a hand over his loose hair, and whispered, “It’s all right, love, it’s all right, you’re home, you’re safe –”

Kanan didn’t say anything, his hands fisted in the back of her shirt as he wept. Hera held him close and pressed a kiss to his forehead. “It’s over,” she told him. “It’s over now –”

The lights came back on with a low whine as the _Ghost_ ’s systems restarted. Kanan lifted his head from her shoulder, the bruises on his face stark in the thin electric light. “No,” he said. “It’s just beginning.”

*

_Four years ago_  
_Mustafar, Outer Rim_

Mustafar was the kind of system Hera immediately wanted to leave.

There was only one habitable body in the system, a moon with the same name as the system, and Hera watched it grow steadily larger in the viewport as she brought the _Ghost_ in towards the defensive fleet arrayed in orbit around it. The moon glowed like a baleful red eye, tiny against the bulk of the gas giant behind it but somehow still sinister. The fleet standing guard over it seemed even smaller, like child’s toys in the vastness of space.

Hera had flipped on the _Ghost_ ’s transponder as soon as she came out of hyperspace, transmitting the security codes she had been given back on Naboo. The response had seemed to come with nauseating slowness; presumably someone on a star destroyer somewhere checking her credentials with the Inquisition and the ISB to make certain she had permission to be here. Finally, she was ordered to proceed along a transmitted vector to an on-planet site, with the dire warning that if she veered from this route the fleet’s TIE patrol would shoot her down. Hera had no intention of doing anything other than exactly what she had been told, not under the watchful gaze of half a dozen star destroyers, cruisers, and their smaller escort ships.

Hera hadn’t visited many Imperial bases over the past six years, but this felt excessive for a system that didn’t boast either a large population or any manufacturing facilities. In hyperspace, nervous and twitchy, she had tried to read up on the official literature about the planet, but the little information there was had been heavily redacted. All Hera had been able to discover was that there were mining facilities onworld and that it was the home of the Imperial Inquisition.

_Kanan’s down there_ , she thought as the _Ghost_ slid silently through the defensive fleet. A pair of TIE fighters had detached from their patrol to fall in on either side of her, but as soon as she was past the fleet they broke away.

Kanan was down there somewhere. He had been there for the past year, and Hera would see him soon. They would be together again –

She had thought of this a thousand times over the last year, sometimes what felt like a thousand times a day, sitting in her cubicle and listening to Markus and Cado argue about smashball or pod racing or swoop dueling. Hera, who normally liked speed sports, usually hadn’t even been able to muster up the energy to put in a word in about the latter. All she could see, over and over again, like a hologram repeating endlessly before her eyes, had been Kanan as she had seen him last.

He had been on his knees with the Inquisitor’s hand dragging his head back, baring his neck for Darth Vader’s lightsaber. He hadn’t been looking at Lord Vader, though. He had been looking at her, and the expression on his face –

Hera had woken from nightmares about that memory, about Kanan saying, _Hera, Hera, Hera_ , her name like a prayer on his lips.

Choosing her. He had chosen her, and that should have meant something to her, except what it meant was that he was _gone_. Hera had hated him for that. She had hated him for lying to her, for making her fall in love with him, for even existing in the first place and making her feel anything, then ripping it away. She had hated him, and then she had missed him, desperately and miserably, because somehow she had lost the knack of being alone. And now –

And now she was going to get him back.

_Or whatever is left of him_ , something in her whispered. _Don’t you remember who you were, before the Empire –_

No.

Hera bit her lip and guided the _Ghost_ down through the moon’s atmosphere, watching the rivers and lakes of molten lava and the black masses of solid land – or what passed for it – grow steadily larger. Her sensor boards brightened as power spikes indicated installations on the surface; mostly related to the moon’s mining operations, but a few which were marked with the Imperial symbol that meant _classified_. If the _Ghost_ ’s sensors hadn’t been coded for her security clearance, they might not have appeared at all.

The facility she was directed to was one of the classified ones. It had probably begun as a mining complex, given its presence on the edge of one of the lava rivers, but had spread to cover a fair span of the solid land behind it, buildings and landing platforms shielded from the planet’s killing heat and toxic fumes inching outwards like rot. TIE fighters, Lambda shuttles, and a few odd starships stood on some of the landing platforms, but others were empty. At any other Imperial facility stormtroopers would have been a ubiquitous presence, but Hera couldn’t see any here. For some reason that sent a shiver down her spine.

The landing platform where her vector terminated was just on the edge of the riverbank, gouts of lava thrown up every now and then against the platform’s shields. Hera dialed up the _Ghost_ ’s shields as she approached, even though they should already have been strong enough to protect the ship from the lava. As she got closer, she saw a single figure standing on the edge of the platform, at the end of the walkway that led into the nearest building.

Kanan.

Hera’s breath caught in her throat, but her hands were steady on the controls. She brought the _Ghost_ down through the shields and settled the ship on the landing platform, leaving the engines on standby rather than shutting them off entirely. Kanan just stayed where he was, watching the ship, though she saw him raise his chin a little; maybe he had caught sight of her through the cockpit viewport.

Hera pushed herself up out of her seat. “Stay here,” she told Chopper when he made to follow her out of the cockpit. “Keep the engines hot. This shouldn’t take long.”

He let out a long grumbling sound, but didn’t argue.

Hera had to resist the urge to stop in her cabin and check her reflection in the mirror before she left. Instead she contained herself to smoothing down her uniform, running her hands nervously back over her lekku to make sure that the leather straps wrapped around them were straight. She knew Kanan preferred her lekku uncovered, but Hera had gotten back into the habit when she had been on Naboo, hating how bright her green skin was amongst all the humans in the ISB offices.

She swallowed and descended the ladder to the hold, her fingers hesitating over the control for the ramp before she finally hit it. It let in a blast of hot, sulfur-scented air as it went down, making Hera’s eyes water and her lekku twitch.

Kanan still hadn’t moved.

Hera stepped out onto the landing platform, her heart suddenly beating very fast as she walked towards him. He was wearing all black, heavy leathers as well as armor marked with the Imperial cog in white, and there was something on his waist that must have been a lightsaber. She hesitated for an instant as she saw it, her step slowing, then kept moving forward. As she got closer, she saw that his face was thinner that it had been the last time she had seen him, the bones seemingly sharper and closer to the skin; there was a fresh bruise high on one cheekbone and a slightly feverish quality to his green eyes. There was a notch in one ear, now healed, that hadn’t been there before; there was another thin scar scraped along the line of his jaw. It was all easy to see because he had been shaved completely bald except for his eyebrows.

It made him look younger and impossibly fragile, barely recognizable as the man she had met on Gorse. Hera felt as though he would shatter if she touched him; she knew him well to be able to tell that he was holding himself stiffly, prepared to fight or flee at a moment’s notice. 

More than anything else, he looked tired.

Hera came to a stop, looking up at him. She had imagined this almost every day since he had been taken from her, but somehow she hadn’t thought that it would ever be like – be like this. All her careful rehearsals had gone completely out of her head; she couldn’t think of a single thing to say.

For a moment they just stood still, looking at each other, and Hera wondered suddenly and for the first time if he was angry with her. He hadn’t wanted this. He had chosen it, but not because he had ever wanted it; he had wanted her, not the Bureau or the Empire or the Inquisition. He wouldn’t even be here if it wasn’t for her.

Hera had hated him for lying to her. It only now struck her that he might hate her for forcing him to come here.

He didn’t say anything, just looked at her as though he couldn’t quite believe she was real. Hera flexed her fingers at her sides, then swallowed and licked her lips. “Kanan.”

He blinked.

“Kanan,” she said again, then reached out to lay a hand on his arm.

He flinched.

He _flinched_ , from _her_ , and for a moment Hera wanted to be sick. She wanted to scream, wanted to hit something, wanted to run; she wanted to take back the last year, the last two years, and do it over again.

He flinched, but otherwise he didn’t move, and after a moment Hera made herself say his name again. This time when she touched him she felt him tense, but it wasn’t the same kind of instinctive withdrawal, and he didn’t protest when she pulled him into an embrace because she didn’t know what else to do. After a moment his arms went around her and he pressed his face against her shoulder; Hera wanted to weep in sheer relief.

Beneath the bulk of his leathers she could feel that he was too thin, skin stretched over bone and muscle as though everything excess had been burned away in the fires of Mustafar. Hera folded her hands into fists against his back and clung to him. He smelled clean, the same kind of soap they had used at the Imperial Academy on Serenno, but when she turned her head she could see faint marks on his face and neck, places where the skin had been rubbed raw somehow and had scarred over. At some point his nose must have been broken, because there was a bump in it that there wasn’t before.

When he finally raised his head, he bit his lip before speaking, something desperate in his eyes –as though he couldn’t quite remember how to put words together. “I love you,” he said at last, his voice rasping as though he hadn’t spoken in days, or even longer. “Please get me out of here.”

Hera reached up to cup his face between her hands, the absence of his beard shocking even through her gloves. He just looked _wrong_ stripped bare like that. “We’re going now,” she told him. “We’re leaving.”

She waited until he nodded before she released him, though she held out her hand for his as he leaned down to pick up his bag. He put his free hand into hers, his fingers gripping hers with desperate strength, and they went back to the _Ghost_ together.

Hera didn’t let go of him, twisting to hit the control to close the ramp behind them. As it began to rise, she saw a figure watching them from a balcony on the nearest building.

It was the Pau’an Inquisitor who had been on Naboo.

She didn’t think Kanan had seen him, and a moment later the closing ramp cut him off from view. Hera swallowed and turned back to Kanan, who was looking around the hold as if seeing it for the first time. In the ship’s artificial lights, he looked even more sepulchral, as though every trace of life had been washed out of him, leaving behind a hollow shell. Only his eyes seemed alive.

“Kanan?” she said, and his gaze swung back to her. “Are you hurt?”

He shook his head, a jerky, aborted motion.

“Are you all right?”

“No.”

His voice was raw, but he squeezed her hand. After a moment he drew her in, tipping his head down to rest his forehead against hers. Hera put her arms around him, concentrating on the sound of his breathing, and said, “Let’s go somewhere. Where do you want to go?”

“Anywhere but here,” he said, his breath warm against her skin. “I don’t care. Anywhere but here.”

*

_Present day_

For a long time, Kanan just leaned against her, shivering as though he couldn’t get warm despite the blankets Hera wrapped around them both. Hera put her arms around him, kissing his forehead and whispering against his hair – Basic, Twi’leki, meaningless comfort to remind him that he was here and safe, not back at the Crucible and whatever fate had awaited him there. Aside from bruises, he hadn’t been hurt, but Hera had always known that the real damage the Crucible had done to him wasn’t physical.

Eventually he pushed himself upright, reaching up to touch Hera’s face. She covered his hands with her own, smiling at him as he said, “That was rash and reckless –”

“You’re welcome, dear,” Hera said, and heard the gasping sob in his laugh. She leaned forward and kissed him, just a light press of her lips against his, enough to feel his breath.

As she pulled back, Kanan said softly, “You left the Empire.”

“I had to,” Hera said, even though the words hurt to say. “I had to. They were going to decommission the team, put us all under investigation. You know what would have happened to Zeb and Sabine then.”

“And Ezra.” His mouth had gone tight. “And you.”

“I had to,” Hera said again. “I had –” Her voice caught on a sob. A moment later she was weeping, enfolded in Kanan’s arms as he held her close. Her life, her career, her oaths to the Empire, all for nothing. All thrown away with barely a second thought. Everything she had spent a decade working for completely gone without any hope of repair.

Kanan didn’t say anything, just held her against him. Hera folded her hands into the back of his shirt, clinging desperately to him as she wept into his shoulder.

Agent Beneke would have been appalled.

It felt like a long time later that she finally raised her head again, swiping a hand beneath her eyes. “I’m sorry,” she told Kanan. “I don’t even know why I’m crying.”

“Because you lost something,” he said, his voice gentle as he reached up to wipe a tear away from her cheek. “Something important to you.”

“I didn’t lose it, I gave it up,” Hera said, her voice hitching again. “There are things more important than the Empire.”

Kanan didn’t say anything, just put a finger under her chin and tipped her face up to kiss her gently. Hera kissed him back – soft at first, then harder, desperate, their teeth scraping against each other. She didn’t break the kiss as she pulled at Kanan’s shirt, then had to draw back with a gasp to drag it off over his head. Her own shirt got caught in her lekku when she tried to take it off; Kanan helped her untangle it, his hands going unerringly to the clasp on her bra. They were kissing again as they helped each other out of the rest of their clothes, Hera hissing reproach at Kanan’s bruises and Kanan trying not to laugh at Hera’s holdout weapons falling out of their various hiding places.

They took each other fast, Hera wrapping her legs around Kanan’s waist and her arms around his shoulders to pull him as close to her as she could manage. She needed him – needed to share his breath, his body, needed to remind herself and him that he was _here_ , he was hers and that neither of them belonged to the Empire, not anymore.

Afterwards, she curled against him, one hand flat against his chest so that she could feel his heartbeat, and wept again. Wept for what she had been – daughter of Ryloth, servant of the Empire – and what she had given up to be here now. Her career. Her duty. Every oath she had ever sworn.

_Traitor_ , she thought, sick to her stomach, and turned her face against Kanan’s shoulder so that he wouldn’t see her expression.

He ran his hand over her back, moving in small, soothing circles as if he guessed the tenor of her thoughts, and Hera thought immediately, _No. I couldn’t have lost him, not again._

His voice soft, he said, “How bad is it going to be? You saw more of the bigger picture than I did,” he added as Hera raised her head to look at him.

“Bad,” she said, pushing herself up on one elbow. “They’ll all be coming for us now.”

Kanan nodded slowly, curving a hand over her hip. “Then we’ll deal with it,” he said, leaning up to press his lips to hers. “Together.”

*

Part of the Crucible was still on fire when the moff in charge of the Inquisition’s operations arrived. Ssaria had succeeded the two moffs before her, the former of whom had been transferred out and the latter of whom had died under what Barriss Offee would have considered mysterious circumstances if she hadn’t known better. The Inquisition didn’t suffer fools lightly.

With the Whip dead, Barriss was the ranking Inquisitor on-site, which meant that she had the dubious honor of meeting Ssaria when the moff’s shuttle touched down on one of the facility’s still-intact landing platforms. She left the other Inquisitors back in the Crucible trying to pick up the wreckage and work out who was dead – her initial impression had been that the casualty count wasn’t as high as it might have been if it had been anyone else going rogue. Both Patience and the Seamstress had made moves to follow her out, but had been firmly rebuffed; Barriss didn’t want to deal with their incompetence in front of the so-called Burning Moff.

Ssaria was a tall, pale-skinned human woman whose black hair was pulled back into a complicated series of loops at the back of her neck. As she came down the ramp of her shuttle, she raised her pale gaze to the smoke still rising from the damaged portion of the facility. Presumably, Barriss thought, the Burning Moff was wondering why something had the temerity to be on fire when she herself hadn’t given the order.

“I see your errant pup has certainly left his mark,” she observed. She considered Barriss with an arched eyebrow. “Which one are you?”

“The First, Moff Ssaria,” Barriss said evenly. She wasn’t wearing her veil; there was no way that Ssaria hadn’t recognized her. She hadn’t interacted much with the woman, but their few previous encounters had more than convinced her that there was little Ssaria didn’t remember. “The Whip is dead.”

“So I have been informed. What else did this little insurrection accomplish, aside from the décor and the Hound’s escape?”

Barriss fell into step alongside Ssaria as they strode towards the doors to the facility, trailed by a courtesy escort of two stormtrooopers. She could hear the faint whispers of Mustafar’s ghosts on the very edge of her perception, but they had faded since Caleb had departed, leaving behind only an echo of an echo. “Three trainees are dead and there are a number of injuries. The only full Inquisitor killed was the Whip.”

A fact about which Verity had been spitting mad, when she had regained consciousness; as far as she was concerned the Hound had considered her of so little account he hadn’t even bothered to kill her. Barriss knew Caleb well enough to guess that that hadn’t been what he had been thinking at the time, but there had been no point in telling her that. Verity wouldn’t understand.

Barriss did, but she didn’t see the point in thinking about that.

_Run, Caleb. Take your lover and your crew and that boy you mean to make your apprentice and run far away, until you reach a place where no one has ever heard of the Empire._

The Hound wouldn’t do that. He knew as well as she did that there was no running from what he had done; he knew that they would be coming for him. He had run before and they had found him; when it came down to it he was one of the last war Jedi in the galaxy. He had already proven that that was how he would die.

Fool. Brave, beautiful fool, but a fool nonetheless.

Ssaria raised an eyebrow as the doors at the end of the walkway slid open and they stepped into the cooler air of the facility. “I was under the impression that generally your rogues leave a much higher body count.”

“Generally they do, ma’am,” Barriss said. “The Hound didn’t go rogue.”

“Enlighten me.”

Barriss considered those cool green eyes again, then said levelly, “You’re aware that the Hunter was killed recently?”

“Yes. He was the Hound’s keeper, was he not?”

“If you want to call it that, ma’am. Despite the Hound’s liaison with the Imperial Security Bureau, he was kept on a close leash, with regular tests. One of those he failed recently.”

“Grand Moff Tarkin’s crystal shipment,” Ssaria said. “Those are expensive, you know.”

_I do_ , Barriss thought. “And several days ago he was involved in an altercation with a naval task force under the command of an ISB agent. That agent contacted Mustafar and requested his removal. The Hound came willingly and without incident; he agreed to stand his trials once Lord Vader arrived. His ISB team interfered.”

“So you blame your failure on the ISB.”

Ssaria and Barriss both went absolutely still at the sound of the new voice, only the sudden hardening of the other woman’s jaw revealing her uneasiness. Barriss turned and bowed slightly, wishing for her veil so that she didn’t have to keep her expression neutral. “My lord.”

“Lord Vader,” Ssaria said coolly. “I see that you’ve deigned to show up.”

Darth Vader swept into the room, flanked by Patience and the Hangman, both of whom looked rather scorched around the edges; the Hangman had a bruise the size of Barriss’s hand on the side of his face, the edges of it disappearing beneath his helmet. The line where Caleb’s lightsaber had struck Patience was scored across the front of her armor, and her remaining droid rode on her shoulder, as though too exhausted by the events of the night to do anything else.

“The boy is with his lover,” Vader said. “Sooner or later, there is only one place that Hera Syndulla will go, and that is where we will find them both.”

Ssaria crossed her arms over her chest. “And where might that be, Lord Vader?”

“Home,” Vader said.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, thanks to my lovely beta Xena, who somehow hasn't killed me yet (and she had a chance, since we were actually in the same place for part of the last month).
> 
> Moff Ssaria originally appears in Marvel's _Lando_ miniseries.
> 
> I am very sorry for the long radio silence -- if you've been following me on Tumblr, you know that in the past two months I have: written, defended, and submitted my MA thesis; went to London for Star Wars Celebration Europe for ten days; and am now in the process of moving cross-country from my beloved New Orleans back to Washington State. I recommend not doing all of those within the span of three weeks, for the record (i.e., everything but the actual writing).
> 
> I do daily progress reports over on Tumblr, under the tag "[daily fic snippet](http://bedlamsbard.tumblr.com/tagged/daily%20fic%20snippet)," if you want to keep track of what I'm working on or get a hint of what's happening in the next few chapters. Admittedly lately I have been too tired to write much, so it's been pretty sparse these past few weeks.


	21. First Last Chance

In Hera’s dream, it was cold, the way it had been cold that morning on Serenno when all the cadets had been ushered outside to witness the execution of three stormtroopers and a naval officer for treason. Eight years later Hera couldn’t remember what exactly it had been that they had done, but she could remember the freezing cold of that winter morning, her breath raising small puffs of white steam every time she exhaled. The commandant had ordered everyone in the Imperial Complex outside, and the ranks of white- and gray- clad troopers, officers, and cadets had lined the yard. It had been snowing the night before, so that everything was covered in a heavy layer of white, adding to the surreal aspect of the scene; Hera could still remember the sound it had made as her boots crunched on it on her way outside. Not her first winter, but every time since that first time on Stygeon Prime it had come as a shock to her, that something like this could exist in the galaxy outside of a holovid.

Eight years ago, Hera had stood with the ranks of the other cadets and watched as the condemned men and women were led out. In her dream –

In her dream, she was the one in binders being marched out onto that field.

Snow crunched under her boots, the icy chill of the air biting at her exposed face and lekku and cutting through the heavy wool of her uniform. Hera stumbled a little as her foot caught some unseen obstacle under the snow, and the stormtroopers grasping her arms hauled her upright, pressing her inexorably forward. Hera found herself looking around frantically from side to side, her gaze skating across the lines of silent watchers, and thought, _Where’s Kanan? Where are Sabine and Zeb and Ezra? Did they get away?_

She knew a moment later that the first, at least, was the wrong question to ask. The Inquisition would never allow one of their own to have justice meted out to them by anyone else. But the others – had they been disposed of already, quietly, because they weren’t truly officers in the eyes of the Empire? Sabine at least should have been here too; she had sworn the same oaths as Hera –

There was a post set in the ground at the center of the field. The stormtroopers turned Hera around so that her back was to it, cuffing her hands to a ring set a little higher than waist-height – the post had been meant for a grown man, not a woman. Their hands were rough and dispassionate as they manhandled her into place, even though Hera didn’t put up any resistance. It left her shivering, both from the cold and the violation.

When the stormtroopers stepped away from her and Hera looked up, it was to find Agent Beneke standing on the field in front of her. He looked at her with huge, sorrowful eyes, as though he couldn’t imagine what could have brought her to this extent after all the hard work he had put into her.

For a moment they just looked at each other, then Agent Beneke raised the datapad he was holding and read out, “Hera Syndulla, for the crime of treason against the Galactic Empire, you are hereby sentenced to death, to be carried out immediately. Do you have any last words?”

_I had to_ , Hera thought. _I love him, I had to. I couldn’t lose him again._ But all she said was, “No, sir.”

“Very well.” He turned and walked away and Hera could have screamed – wanted to scream, wanted to yell for him to come back, that she was sorry, that she had never meant to disappoint him.

Three stormtroopers stepped up to take his place. Hera caught her breath, her heart pounding frantically as she lifted her head. _I will not close my eyes, I will not flinch, I am Cham Syndulla’s daughter and a child of Ryloth_ –

The stormtroopers fired.

*

Hera woke with a gasp, her hands closing into fists on her sheets. Beside her, Kanan was whimpering softly in his sleep, caught in the grip of his own nightmares. Hera put a hand on his shoulder only to feel him flinch away and drew back, sitting up in the shadows of the darkened room. She should have woken Kanan up, but right now the memory of her dream was too near – the memory of the dream, and of the executions she had seen before. That one on Serenno had been the first of four over the course of the past decade.

It was the fate that would await her if – when – the Empire caught them.

Hera pressed her hands to her face, shuddering, then folded the blankets back over Kanan’s trembling shoulder and got up. The metal floor was icy beneath her bare feet, and for an instant, searching in the darkness for her robe and slippers, Hera thought she heard snow crunch.

_It was just a dream. It wasn’t real._

She found her slippers and stepped gratefully into them, wrapping her robe around herself as she left the cabin. The _Ghost_ was well into its night cycle and the ship felt still and quiet around her, everyone exhausted after the stress of the past few days. They were in hyperspace now, headed far away from the Empire and everything that had Hera had spent the past ten years working for. They were, for whatever value the word had at the moment, safe.

For now.

Hera passed out of the living quarters and through the lounge into the galley, turning on the light so that she could find the kettle and a packet of tea that Zeb had bought a few months ago on Garel. She could still feel the soul-deep cold of that field on Serenno; she held her hands out over the kettle as it began to boil, the steam rising up between her fingers.

She wondered if she would even get the ceremony of a traitor’s execution, or if they would simply shoot her out of hand when they caught her. She might be – might have been – an Imperial officer, but when it came down to it…

When it came down to it, she was still a Twi’lek.

Agent Kallus had proven that on the _Resolute_. No one would have done that to a human officer.

Hera bit her lip and poured the hot water over the tea leaves, taking the cup back with her to the small table. She wrapped her hands around it and breathed in the sweet-smelling steam, trying to exorcise the memory of that field. If nothing else, when she was executed it was very unlikely to be on Serenno, since she had no desire to go back there and couldn’t see any reason to do so.

Maybe it would at least be somewhere warm.

She turned as she heard the door slide open behind her and saw Kanan come in, bare-chested and with his hair loose around his shoulders. He gave her a small smile and came over to sit down beside her, Hera scooting over to make space for him.

“Bad dream?” he murmured as she turned her face against his shoulder.

“Bad dream,” she agreed. “You?”

“Yeah.” He put his arm around her and Hera leaned against him, still shivering despite the warmth of his body – Kanan, she had noticed over the years, barely felt the cold and gave off heat like a furnace. Something to do with the Force, she supposed, since it wasn’t an ordinary human trait.

“Kanan, what do we _do_?” she whispered. “We can’t run forever, no matter what Zeb and Sabine think. Sooner or later we’re going to have to turn and fight.”

She felt his flinch and guessed that the idea was as terrifying to him as it was to her, though probably for different reasons. Killing Inquisitors was one thing. Hera didn’t know whether she would be able to fire at a stormtrooper or a TIE fighter. Not at real Imperials. Inquisitors were something else. Six years with Kanan had taught her that.

Hera had meant the oaths she had sworn.

“Do you want to run?” Kanan asked her softly. “I spent eight years running. It’s not a good life, but it will be easier with a ship and a crew. The galaxy’s a big place, even with the ISB and the Inquisition chasing us.”

“I don’t know what I want,” Hera admitted. “I just – I don’t want to die, Kanan. And I don’t see a way that this doesn’t end with all of us dead in a ditch somewhere. Or an alley. Or with the _Ghost_ blown out of the stars.”

“That’s not going to happen,” Kanan said. “I promise you. That’s not going to happen.”

“I believed in the Empire,” Hera said, her voice small. “I – I still do, even now. Even after everything. But – I spent ten years ready to die on a battlefield for it. I spent ten years fighting for it – for my right to be part of it. And now –” She caught her breath. “I don’t regret what I did. It was my decision. But I don’t know what to do now. And they’re depending on me – Zeb and Sabine and Ezra and even Chopper. And I don’t know what to do.”

“We can figure it out,” Kanan said, tipping his forehead down against hers. “Together. In the morning. We’ve got time. You don’t need to know everything now.”

Hera nodded tiredly. She drank a little of her tea, which was starting to go cold, and said suddenly, “What were you dreaming of?”

He stilled, swallowing before he answered. “The first Hunt I ever went on.”

He never talked about the Crucible, about what had been done to him there or what he had done. Hera asked hesitantly, “What happened?”

Kanan shook his head and just said, “I earned my name.”

Hera pushed gently at his shoulder and he slid off the bench so that she could stand up, carrying the mug over to the sink. She came back to Kanan when she was done with it, slipping her hand into his as they left the galley and passed through the lounge on the way back to her cabin.

“What did you dream of?” he asked as Hera was reluctantly shedding her robe so that she could climb back into bed with him.

She looked down at him, already sitting on the edge of her bunk. “Something that happened when I was a cadet,” she said. “It was a long time ago. It’s over now.”

Kanan flicked a finger at the lights to turn them off as Hera slid into bed beside him, arranging the sheets comfortably around them and pushing her cold toes against his warm ones. “Whatever happens,” he breathed against her ear, “we’re together now. Neither of us is alone. We never will be again.”

*

Some days Ahsoka missed the Jedi.

For more reasons than one, and not merely because sometimes she felt that she might drown in the echoing emptiness of the Force. Even though she had long since left the Order by the time the Sith had come for them, the Jedi had still been her people, and she had felt their dying in the Force. She could still feel their dying in the Force if she meditated too deeply, knew that it would resonate backwards and forwards in time for millennia.

Every Jedi she had ever spoken to about it had felt it for years before it had happened in truth, a shadow in the Force that as far as Ahsoka knew had always been there. She just hadn’t known what it had meant – no one had. Not until it was too late. The Force didn’t understand time. The death of the Jedi – the deaths of worlds, of systems, of massacres that had occurred already and were yet to come – left ripples that would be felt in the Force as long as there was anyone to sense it. Even if there were no more Jedi.

If the Jedi had still been in the galaxy, then there would have been someone that Ahsoka could go to. Someone that she could hand off the Chuchi business to, because it had been the Order’s mandate to protect senators and their families. _Republic_ senators, that was, and it wasn’t as though the Galactic Senate had ever had to worry about the Republic targeting its own senators.

_Well, not that we ever knew of, anyway._ It was hard to look back on the days of the Clone Wars knowing now what Palpatine was and not second-guess everything that had ever happened, every mission and operation Ahsoka had been a part of. Most of it, after those kneejerk moments of _what an idiot, Tano_ , had been exactly what it seemed. But there were a few…

She shook her head, pulling her legs up to curl under her on the pilot’s seat. All Ahsoka could see through the _Aegis_ ’s viewport was the strange blue light of hyperspace, but she would be back in realspace within in a few minutes. It was a relaxing change from the past few days.

Ahsoka had had to go all the way to Coruscant, which she had avoided as much as possible over the past fifteen years and hadn’t been particularly happy to revisit now. Going back to her homeworld – or the planet that had essentially been her homeworld, since she barely remembered anything about Shili – had been a shocking experience. Seeing the Temple, even from a distance, and feeling the corruption in the Force had left her sick and reeling, and on top of that she had had to break into the senatorial apartment block at 500 Galactica in order to speak to Riyo Chuchi.

If the Order had still existed she could have just walked in the front door. If the Order still existed then – well, this might still have happened, but not for the same reasons, and Ahsoka would have been able to pass this off to someone who wasn’t so emotionally involved.

She rubbed a hand at the base of her montrals, dislodging her headband. The whole situation was a nightmare, one made worse by the fact that the events on Naboo had made any rescue attempt virtually impossible for the foreseeable future.

_If it’s not one crisis, it’s another –_

The thought had barely crossed her mind when the dashboard in front of her beeped, signaling that they were about to exit hyperspace.

“I hope Cham Syndulla’s been having more luck than I have,” Ahsoka said to QT-KT, who beeped reassuringly in response. “Yes, you’re right, I’m sure it could hardly be –”

Worse, she meant to finish the sentence, but as the _Aegis_ flashed out of hyperspace the proximity alarm shrieked and Ahsoka grabbed the control yoke, sending the ship into a steep dive as something scraped across the hull with a sound that made her lekku twitch.

As the _Aegis_ leveled out and Ahsoka finally got a clear look out her viewport, she thought for one horrified heartbeat that the entire Free Ryloth fleet had been destroyed. Starship wreckage seemed to stretch as far as the eye could see, along with shattered TIEs and the mixed bag of old starfighters the fleet used. Then she blinked and the chaos resolved itself into manageable parts, and Ahsoka realized that what she had taken for the entire fleet was at most four ships, one of which had definitely been an Imperial star cruiser at some point. The _Aegis_ had struck what seemed to have been part of a heavy freighter.

“Run a scan for life forms, Qutee,” she ordered. “I’m going to take a look around.”

QT-KT chirped a response and trundled over to plug into the appropriate console. Ahsoka eased the _Aegis_ through the wreckage, most of it still traveling outwards from the points where the ships had been destroyed. Three starships, she decided finally, piecing together the wreckage in her head: the Imperial cruiser and two Free Ryloth ships. None of them were the _Forlorn Hope_ , at least, or any of the other big ships in the fleet. The rest of the wreckage had come from starfighters, both Imperial and Free Ryloth.

“Anything?” she asked QT-KT, who responded in the negative.

Ahsoka swore softly. At her best guess, estimating off how far the wreckage had drifted from point of impact, the battle had been fought only a few rotations earlier. She knew that Free Ryloth had protocols about moving from place to place in the wake of an Imperial attack; the only problem was that Ahsoka didn’t know any of them. By now they could have been nearly anywhere in the galaxy.

_And I hope they’re still going to be taking my calls_ , she said, reaching for her comm set. It was always possible that Cham Syndulla had been injured or even killed in the attack; there was no guarantee that his wife or anyone else in the fleet would respond to her.

“Don’t count your convorees before they’re hatched, Tano,” Ahsoka muttered, punching in the correct frequency and holding her breath. She let it out as Cham Syndulla’s form flickered into existence on her holoprojector. “It’s good to see your face, General Syndulla.”

_“Fulcrum,”_ he said, sounding tired. He looked it, too; his lekku were drooping with weariness and the exhaustion on his face, combined with the blue tint of the hologram, gave Ahsoka the impression that she was speaking to a ghost, rather than a living man. _“Are you –”_

“I’m at your previous location,” Ahsoka said. “Are you all right? What happened?”

_“Nothing I care to discuss over the comm,”_ Cham said. _“I and my family are all safe, at least for the time being. I’ll transmit the fleet’s current coordinates to you.”_

“Thank –” The transmission cut out before she could finish, though a moment later the console beeped to signal receipt of the coordinates. Ahsoka fed them into the navicomputer and let it calculate the best course there, looking around at the wreckage of the battle. Without knowing which ships had been destroyed, she could only begin to guess at the extent of the losses suffered by Free Ryloth. The fleet’s size was deceptive; fifty thousand souls sounded like a great deal, but it was barely a fraction of the population that had been left behind on Ryloth. Any loss would resound throughout it, let alone whatever that meant for Cham Syndulla’s political standing.

The navicomputer signaled that it had finished the calculations. Ahsoka confirmed them, then, with one last look around at the battlefield, she jumped to hyperspace.

*

Cham felt like he had barely gotten to sleep after Ahsoka’s call when he woke to the sound of his comlink beeping urgently, the only sound in the otherwise silent bedroom. He put his arm out and groped blindly for it, snatching it up as his fingers touched it on his nightstand. The general alarm wasn’t going off, which at least meant that a second Imperial fleet hadn’t shown up. He hoped.

“This is Syndulla,” he said, rubbing the heel of his other hand into his eyes in an attempt to wake himself up. Repairs on the _Forlorn Hope_ and dealing with the aftermath of the battle throughout the fleet had kept him and everyone else occupied for the past few days; he didn’t feel like he had had so much as a moment to think since they had jumped away, let alone sleep properly.

_“General?”_ It was Mishaan. _“Lysha and I have found something that you had better see immediately.”_

“I’ll be right there.” Cham let his head fall back as the transmission ended, staring up at the painted ceiling above his round bed. In the darkness the shapes were all shades of gray, but he knew that with the lights on they would be brightly colored. Not Ryloth, not home, but enough that in a bad light and if he didn’t think about it too hard, he might forget for a few minutes that he wasn’t at the Syndulla estate or the Lessu townhouse.

As he got up and began to dress, he wondered if the droids who had once occupied the _Forlorn Hope_ would have been surprised at what Cham’s people had made of it. That was supposing that droids felt surprise at all; having encountered more than a few during the long months when Ryloth had been occupied by the Separatists, Cham wasn’t certain that they _didn’t_ think or feel. Some of them had certainly seemed surprised in the few seconds before he had blown their heads off, after all.

It was early in the ship’s day cycle, the mid-watch still on duty and the morning watch, in all likelihood, not yet out of their bunks. The few crew members that Cham saw in the ship’s corridors greeted him as he passed by and he nodded in response, asking after the families of the ones he knew. He was careful to make certain that his passage was unhurried, as though he had only woken early and decided to start his day rather than go back to sleep; anything else, he knew, would have only spread rumors throughout the ship that something had gone amiss. In the current climate, that was the last thing they needed; everyone was still on high alert, but it was finally beginning to relax. He hoped.

Mishaan and Lysha were in the war room when he arrived on the bridge, accompanied one of Lysha’s information security officers, a tall red-skinned Twi’lek male with dreamy eyes who also happened to be Cham’s second cousin’s youngest son. All three of them looked up as Cham entered, glancing between each other as if judging silently which of them would have to betray whatever unpleasant truth had summoned him there.

“Well?” Cham said grimly when none of them spoke. “What is it? You said it was urgent.”

Lysha said, “Neso? Tell the Syndulla what you discovered.”

The information security officer straightened upright. “Uncle – General – since the attack my team has been reviewing internal and external communications inside the fleet, as well as all activity on the fleet HoloNet; we were looking for security holes that might have allowed the Empire to track our movement.”

“And you found one?” Cham asked. That would certainly have qualified as urgent, but he wasn’t certain that it would be urgent enough for Mishaan and Lysha to call him out of bed.

Neso shook his head, his lekku swaying; only a few inches of the tips were tattooed, marking him as a fourth-rank patrician from the Cseh Syndulla family. “No, Syndulla – or at least, not more than the expected ones. People in communication with their relatives on Ryloth or in the colonies, that sort of thing. Everyone is either going through channels or we know the holes they’re exploiting, like the black marketeers over on the _Marigo_ and the _Shallow Grave_.”

“All right,” Cham said. “So what’s the problem?”

“There aren’t any holes,” Neso said. “But thirty-five hours before the attack, there was a transmission that doesn’t make any sense.” He turned on the holoprojector, displaying an image of the fleet as it had been ordered before the battle.

“What do you mean?” Cham asked. “It was encrypted –”

“No – I mean, yes, but we were able to decrypt it with what Xiaan brought back from Naboo.”

“Imperial,” Cham said.

Neso nodded, his narrow jaw set with a grimness that Cham felt. “ISB.”

Cham swore viciously.

“That’s what I said,” Lysha remarked.

Mishaan’s gaze cut sideways to Cham, but she didn’t add anything.

“What ship was it sent from?”

“Ours,” Neso said, and hastened to add as Cham stared at him, “That’s not the important part, Uncle. The final transmission was sent from the _Hope_ , but this isn’t where it originated from.” He tapped another control on the holotable, where a red line traced a path tracking back and forth between more ships than Cham could count. “The signal bounced off about a third of the ships in the fleet; we’ve only just managed to track it back to the source.”

_Please, gods, don’t let it be a Syndulla ship._ If it turned out to be a Fenn ship then he could at least pawn it off on Secchun; anything else he would have to deal with himself.

“Which ship?”

“The _Coba_. Amersu,” he added quickly, clarifying which clan the ship had belonged to.

“The _Coba_ was destroyed in the battle,” Cham said. “Are you sure –”

“We’ve triple-checked it, General, but it’s possible that it could have bounced off the _Coba_ and because she was destroyed, we aren’t able to trace it back any further. We’re trying everything we can, Uncle.” Neso gave him a worried look, like he feared that Cham didn’t believe him.

“Is Keto Amersu still onboard?” Lysha asked. “A few words with him –”

“He is,” Cham said; neither the _Hope_ nor any of the Amersu ships had been able to spare the shuttles needed to transfer Keto or the other _Coba_ survivors to one of the clan’s six remaining ships, so for now he was still in one of the _Hope_ ’s spare staterooms. “But I can’t bring something like this to another clan head without more proof, even if Amersu is one of our allies.”

Mishaan’s lips compressed into a thin line; Lysha just sighed, one hand closing into a fist on the edge of the holotable. “It’s an Amersu ship,” she said. “If anyone knows, it will be him – or his people –”

“I can’t pull every _Coba_ survivor on the _Hope_ – or any other Syndulla ship, for that matter – into interrogation,” Cham pointed out. “The Synedrion would have my head, possibly literally. If I want to do that, I need something more concrete than a signal traced back to a destroyed ship, and even then the Synedrion will probably scream about it.”

“They don’t need to know,” Lysha said slowly. “Who would tell them –”

“The Amersu, for one,” Neso pointed out quietly. “Since that’s illegal under clan law. Clans have gone to war over less.”

“This is the security of the fleet!” Lysha said, startled. “The Synedrion would understand –”

“The Synedrion would point to the fact that the message was transmitted from the _Forlorn Hope_ ,” Cham pointed out dryly. “Most of the clans who truly believe in clan sovereignty are here in the fleet; they’ll fight to defend that right if they think it’s being violated. Give me something solid, something that I can take to the Synedrion, and then they’ll consider it.”

Lysha and Mishaan scowled at each other, while Neso just looked at the hologram. The Cseh Syndullas had had seats in the Curia for centuries; Neso’s sister had represented them until she had been killed during one of the riots in Lessu. Even if he generally avoided it, he knew the politics of the Synedrion as well as Cham or Mishaan did.

“ _Were_ any of the other ships the signal bounced off Amersu ships?” Cham asked him suddenly. It wouldn’t be proof, but…

Neso shook his head. “But there are only seven Amersu ships in the fleet and most of them are small. Only three clans had more than one ship in the trail – Syndulla, Fenn, and Teksa. And I think Teksa might have been an accident, since they only have two ships anyway.”

“Shiri Teksa would rather slit her own throat than betray Ryloth,” Mishaan said sharply. “The Empire bombed out her lands and enslaved whatever of her clan that they didn’t kill. She and her brothers barely got away with their own lives. Those two ships are all that’s left of Teksa now.”

“Shiri is not currently under suspicion,” Cham said, though privately he didn’t think that was enough of a reason to discount her entirely. He had known too many people who had collaborated with the Empire to be certain that anyone was above suspicion.

“I don’t believe that Amersu would either,” Mishaan said, shaking her head. “Keto split the clan to come to us – left his brother behind on Ryloth. He would never – and the _Coba_ was destroyed, anyway. Even the Imperials aren’t foolish enough to kill their own spy.”

_Except most of the_ Coba _’s crew escaped_ , Cham thought. _And they’re on_ this _ship now._ “It doesn’t have to be a clan head. Neso, are there are any other transmissions with this same kind of signature? Within the past week, month – year?”

“We’re looking now,” Neso said. “Transmissions are sometimes bounced between a few ships, since something like the _Hope_ or the _Kill_ has more range than a little hunter-killer or planet-hopper. It’ll take us a while to sort out anything bigger, especially once we start going back more than a month or two.”

Lysha was frowning. “Thirty-five hours,” she said, and all three of them looked around at her. “What happened thirty-five hours before the attack that the spy would send to the Imperials then? We’d already been in that system for days; it can’t have been that we’d just arrived.”

“Ojeda wasn’t here yet,” Cham said.

Mishaan’s mouth went tight, then her eyes narrowed suddenly. “You left the fleet, General,” she said, turning to him. “It wasn’t common knowledge, but you didn’t exactly make a secret of it either.”

“As you pointed out, it was hardly the first time in recent days,” Cham said. “Perhaps…” He let the words trail off. “It doesn’t matter now. Neso, will you be able to tell if another transmission like that is sent?”

The younger man hesitated, brows drawing together as he thought. “Only if it bounces off another Syndulla ship,” he said finally. “I’ll see what my officers can do; we might be able to work something out.”

“Good.” Cham blinked, realizing that there was one pertinent question that still hadn’t been answered. “What did the message say?”

“Just the coordinates of the fleet,” Neso said, his mouth tightening.

_Just_ , Cham thought, and resisted the urge to rub at his brows again. “Let me know the moment you find out anything else,” he said. “And what we’ve discussed doesn’t leave this room – except for your officers, Neso,” he had to add, and Neso nodded in response. “The last thing this fleet needs right now is a witch hunt for an Imperial spy.”

“Yes, Uncle,” Neso said, his mouth set grimly.

He left a moment later, along with Lysha, leaving Mishaan and Cham alone in the room. Before Cham could speak, Mishaan held up her hand and said, “You don’t have to say it. I know Ojeda couldn’t have sent that transmission.”

“I was not going to say anything,” Cham said, crossing his arms over his chest. “Even I can admit that at least it would have been convenient.”

Mishaan sighed. “Convenient is one word for it.” Turning away from him, she studied the hologram of the fleet’s previous formation, her hands fisted on the side of the table. “A blasted spy and a traitor…it could be any of them. Any of _us_ ,” she added bitterly.

“We seem to have discounted Shiri Teksa, at least,” Cham said. “And it’s not Secchun Fenn.”

Mishaan turned towards him, her eyes narrowing. “What makes you say that?”

“A personal matter we’ve discussed recently,” Cham said. “And I know Secchun Fenn. She would not lower herself to spy for anyone, especially the Imperials who took her husband and her children from her, forced her from her home and dishonored her clan.” He stared at the hologram. “Everyone in this fleet has suffered under the Empire, though. Everyone has lost something, someone.”

Mishaan’s lip curled. “I’ve never understood why any Twi’lek would work for the Empire.”

If she saw the sharp glance Cham turned on her, she didn’t show it. “It could be blackmail,” he said slowly. “Do what we want or we’ll kill your chi – your family, that sort of thing. Or – life in the fleet is a chancy, uncomfortable thing. The Empire could have offered them the chance to go home.”

_Home_ , he thought. It had been his choice to leave Ryloth, but sometimes he still woke in the dark of his stateroom and missed the townhouse, the villa, the ancestral lands that his family had held for time out of mind, that Syndullas had fought and died and bled over for millennia. Cham had left them all behind, and some days he wasn’t certain that he had made the right choice. He knew that in all likelihood by now both the townhouse and the villa, as well as all his other properties, were so much ash, but it would have been very good to see them again. Cham could understand how tempting such an offer would be, especially for those who hadn’t cut their ties with Ryloth quite so finally as he.

Mishaan shook her head in incomprehension and said, as if to a child, “That is worth nothing against the honor of our people.”

“Honor will not restore what has been lost to us,” Cham said. “The Empire has that power – not when it comes to the dead, but those who have been arrested or enslaved, lands that have been confiscated or abandoned – and hard credits can be very persuasive even to the most reluctant.”

“Treason is treason,” Mishaan said flatly.

“We are not in disagreement about that,” Cham said. He rested his hand on her shoulder and she looked up at him, her scarred mouth curved downwards in a frown. “We cannot make judgments about what we do not know, Mishaan. There is nothing that we can do now which we are not already doing, and we cannot make decisions based on fear which may well tear this fleet apart.”

Mishaan’s lip curled. “Fear?” she said. “Not fear. This is the future of our people at stake, General. What price is too great to pay to preserve it?”

Cham had said much the same thing to Alecto when he had sent his family away from Ryloth. Now, eleven years later, he didn’t have an answer – not one that Mishaan would accept anyway.

Mishaan looked at him for a long moment, then stepped out from beneath his hand. “I should get back to the bridge. We’re supposed to finish repairs on C deck today.”

Cham nodded slowly, letting his outstretched hand fall back to his side. “Everything’s proceeding on schedule?” he asked “No difficulties?”

“We’re fine,” she said, her voice suddenly cool. “Considering the circumstances, we didn’t take as much damage as we could have, even after the shields began to fail. Another few minutes and it would have been much worse. Excuse me, General.” She nodded stiffly to him, then left without another word, leaving Cham standing alone in the war room. 

*

After everyone on the _Ghost_ had gotten up and reassured themselves of Kanan’s current state of consciousness and continued wellbeing over breakfast, Hera assembled them all in the lounge. Ezra, Zeb, and Sabine lined up on the bench like they were expecting to be shot, but Kanan perched on the end and smiled up at her, bruised but loose and mostly relaxed in a long-sleeved green shirt that he kept pulling down over his knuckles. It was a nervous tic that Hera hadn’t seen in years, but she wasn’t about to comment on it now – not when she had Kanan right here, alive and smiling and more or less unharmed. She had come so close to losing him entirely. They all had.

But they were here now. They were all here now, alive and well, with the worst physical damage nothing more than bruises and a few scrapes. They had gone up against the Imperial Inquisition and they had _survived_. They had done the impossible and walked away breathing.

Hera rested her hands on the table, looking around at them – at her crew, her team – and let herself just breathe for a few heartbeats, taking it all in. Then she drew herself up, making them look at her as she said, “Before we do anything else, we have some decisions to make.”

“I vote that we don’t turn ourselves over to the Empire,” Sabine said immediately. When Zeb and Ezra both looked at her, she added, “What? I wanted to get that out of the way early.”

“I wasn’t actually planning to offer that up as an option,” Hera said, “since I’m not particularly interested in being put up against a wall and shot – that being the best outcome there.”

“You three will be shot,” Kanan said helpfully. “I get to go back to the Crucible and Ezra gets dragged off to Project Harvester over on Arkanis.”

Ezra turned to stare at him with wide eyes. “What’s Project Harvester?”

“Not important right now,” Hera said firmly. “Thank you for clearing that up, dear,” she added to Kanan, and saw his mouth quirk in a smile. “We’ll be shot and you two will be taken off to a fate worse than death.”

“I think it’s always good to be clear about these things,” he said. “That said, not really an option I’m looking forward to.”

“Yeah, I don’t think any of us are,” Zeb remarked. “What’s option B?”

Hera looked around at all of them, everyone from Kanan’s bright, patient gaze to Ezra and Sabine’s curiosity, Zeb’s solidity, Chopper on the floor beside them, his photoreceptors unblinking. “We run,” she said. “Lose ourselves in the Outer Rim or even out into Wild Space. We take whatever jobs we can to put food on the table and fuel in the _Ghost_ and we stay off the Empire’s radar.”

Zeb frowned. “I’ve been on the run before,” he said. “Not an easy way to make a living.”

“So have I,” Kanan said. “But this is a good ship with a strong crew. It will be easier that way than it was for either of us on our own.”

Zeb considered him for a moment with flattened ears, frowning. “There an option C?”

“We can split up,” Hera said reluctantly. “All of you signed up to be Imperial officers, not crew on a beat-up freighter with a price on all our heads. If you want to leave, then I won’t stop you – I’ll take you anywhere you want to go, as long as it doesn’t endanger the rest of us.” She looked at Ezra. “I can’t take you back to Lothal. Even if we stick to the far side of the planet, by now the Ghost will be tagged; the risk that we’ll be caught is too great. I can take you to Garel and make sure that you have the credits to buy passage home –”

Ezra was already shaking his head, but his gaze was on Kanan, not her. “I already made my decision,” he said.

Kanan met his gaze and inclined his chin slightly. Ezra nodded back, something in his shoulders settling out before he finally turned back towards Hera. “Thanks for the offer,” he said, “but you’re stuck with me now. I’m staying.”

Sabine and Zeb had apparently been having a conversation conducted entirely with eyebrows, ears, and meaningful glances, because Sabine said, “So are we. We’ve come this far; you’re not getting rid of us now. We’re a team. Whatever happens, we deal with it together.”

“As a family,” Zeb added.

Hera looked at Kanan. “Love?”

“Hey,” he said softly, “you know you’ve always got me.”

Sabine pressed her hands together on top of the table and stretched, her back popping loudly enough that Hera’s lekku twitched. “So now that we’ve gotten that out of the way – we just, what, strike out on our own? Hope that whoever hires us hasn’t seen any of the Imperial broadsheets?”

“We could be pirates!” Ezra offered brightly.

“We’re _not_ being pirates,” Kanan said flatly. He met Hera’s gaze. “We don’t need to make that decision now. Shadow ports and stations are a cred a dozen out here in the Rim. We can stop in at one of them, get the lay of the land –”

“And we need fuel and food anyway,” Sabine pointed out. “Mustafar’s pretty far out. We didn’t have a chance to fully fuel up back on Lothal, and we’ve burned through most of our reserves since then. Another hyperspace jump or two and we’ll be running on fumes.”

Hera grimaced. She had checked the _Ghost_ ’s fuel levels before they had jumped to Mustafar, but not since; she hadn’t realized it was that bad. “Then unless anyone has any better options, I guess it’s settled,” she said. “Kanan, do you have any contacts in the area who might still be active?”

Kanan frowned. “I haven’t exactly been in the game in six years,” he said. “That’s pretty much a career in this job.”

“What was an Inquisitor doing running around shadow ports?” Ezra asked, his eyebrows darting upwards.

“I wasn’t always an Inquisitor,” Kanan said. His gaze went suddenly shadowed, his jaw clenching, and Hera found herself reaching for his hand. He folded his fingers around hers with a grateful expression, one foot beating a restless tattoo against the floor before he stilled himself. With an effort that Hera could feel in the tight grip of his hand, he added to her, “You’ve met the guys I used to hang out with. Even if any of them _are_ active, I wouldn’t trust them not to sell us out the first time the Empire comes asking. But the ports should still be safe enough; it’s not as though everyone there isn’t hiding from something.”

Sabine studied him as though it was taking everything she had not to ask him exactly how he knew that, but she managed not to do so. Then she put her shoulders back and nodded, apparently to herself. “What then?”

Kanan’s gaze flickered to Hera. She said, “Then we reevaluate our options. A lot is going to depend on how the Empire reacts.”

“Let me guess,” Zeb said. “It’s not going to be well.”

Kanan rolled his eyes. “You think?”

*

Agent Kallus stood alone in the otherwise-empty hangar as the shuttle approached. He had dismissed the stormtroopers who would normally have accompanied him to greet the new arrivals and had rebuffed Minister Tua’s offer to join him, which even he had to admit had been well-meant. The two other ranking Imperial officers at the Lothal Imperial Complex had mysteriously absented themselves when the matter had come up, which Kallus had already reported to their offworld superiors even though technically speaking it was none of his concern.

The Lambda’s TIE escorts broke off as the shuttle’s wings folded up, its landing gear extending as it entered the hangar. It touched down smoothly in front of Kallus and he heard the engines shut off. He couldn’t stop his shoulders from tensing as the ramp extended; he knew how the Empire worked. He could very easily be blamed for this, and if that happened, there would be nothing that he could do to fight it.

_Blast that girl._

He hadn’t been told who was coming to Lothal, just that it would be someone who intended to handle the Syndulla/Jarrus problem as quickly and effectively as possible. Kallus didn’t know whether he would have any part in that beyond the initial briefing; for all he knew the new arrival bore orders for him to report back to Naboo, or worse. It wasn’t common, but field executions still occurred on occasion.

The figure that emerged from the shuttle was familiar – or rather, all three of them were, but he had only seen the latter two from a remove the last time they had been on Lothal. Kallus allowed his shoulders to loosen a little at their appearance, since he doubted that either Naboo or Mustafar would send three Inquisitors if execution was all that they had in mind. Especially if it had been his execution.

He inclined his head as the veiled woman in the lead approached. “Inquisitor.”

“Agent Kallus,” said the woman other Inquisitors called the First. “Moff Ssaria is extremely displeased by recent events.”

“She is hardly alone in that, Inquisitor,” Kallus said cautiously.

“No.” The First met his gaze with cold blue eyes over her black veil. “My master is also displeased. He has sent us to aid you on your search for the renegades.”

“I…see,” Kallus said slowly. He hadn’t received those orders from Naboo yet, but the Inquisitors’ presence here meant that they would probably have been transmitted to his datapad by the time he got back to his borrowed office. Naboo would have waited to see if the Inquisition called for blood before making a decision one way or another; it was their people who had been killed on Mustafar. By the ISB’s now-former agents, no less, and all because Roberto Beneke had been a damned idiot when he was still alive, and his mistakes were apparently doomed to haunt Kallus even after his death. “Well, we have some ideas, based on Syndulla and Jarrus’s history together –”

“Free Ryloth,” said the big rocky-skinned Inquisitor behind the First. He had a hand-sized bruise on the side of his face, or at least Kallus assumed it was a bruise; it was always difficult to tell with aliens of unfamiliar species. The Inquisitor beside him was female and helmeted, with a fresh scar across the front of her armor that might have come from a lightsaber.

“My master believes that Syndulla will return to her family sooner or later,” the First said without looking back at her companions. “We will be able to eliminate two threats to the Empire at once.”

“Free Ryloth,” Kallus said slowly, “the ISB may be able to help you with.”

*

Traitor somewhere in the ranks or not, life in the fleet didn’t simply stop, especially in the wake of a battle. Cham might not have been personally responsible for any single ship in the fleet, but he was responsible for, if not the fleet as a whole, at least for the Syndulla ships and those of their allied clans. For all that the _Forlorn Hope_ had taken heavy fire during the battle, both its shields and the heavy plating of its hull, designed specifically for ship-to-ship battles, had held. None of its compartments had vented to space.

The _Forlorn Hope_ was the only real warship in the fleet, though a number of the others had been so heavily modified that they came close to that classification. Most of the ships, however, had the thinner hulls and weaker shields of the civilian vessels they had been before they joined the fleet, and while normally that had little impact on regular transit, in a battle it could mean the difference between life and death. Since the battle he had been on the comm almost constantly, dealing with requests for aid from damaged ships or giving his condolences to the families of those who had died.

Free Ryloth was not a war fleet. More and more it was beginning to show, and Cham suspected that he was not the only one who feared that it would not survive another battle like the last.

This morning he had gotten the updated casualty reports from the Syndulla ships, along with those of half a dozen other clans, which were on the whole rather more positive than the previous version had been. Not by much, but it did seem that the fleet would be back at fighting strength sooner than anyone had previously dared hope. The problem with that, of course, was that Free Ryloth _wasn’t_ a war fleet; what that meant was that they might be able to defend themselves just long enough to run again. Might.

He sat at his desk, frowning at the message he had just received. Alecto, who had come in to tell him that they were two more starfighters down until they were able to get parts that were unavailable on the _Forlorn Hope_ , said, “What is it?”

“Secchun Fenn wants to come,” Cham said.

Alecto frowned. “Well,” she said dubiously, “at least she warned you this time.”

“That’s because she actually wants the information I have,” Cham said, taking the datapad back from her and typing a quick affirmative. If asked to bet on it, he would have placed half his former fortune that Secchun was already on a shuttle over from the _Mercy Kill_. “She has to at least pretend to be polite.”

He set the datapad down and massaged his forehead with his fingers, trying to remember if he had to clear anything off his schedule in advance of Secchun’s arrival. At this point, he didn’t have much of a schedule per se; it was mostly a case of which captain called when. He thought – he hoped – that by this point it was mostly over with and there weren’t any heretofore undiscovered disasters waiting to happen.

He glanced up to see Alecto eyeing him, her arms crossed over her chest. She didn’t look as tired as he felt, but he knew that she had been in the starfighter hangars working on repairs for most of the past day, though she and the other squadron leaders were making sure that all the pilots were rotating out so that at least a squadron’s worth would be well-rested at any given time. Now would be a very bad time for the Empire to press a second attack; with the ships in the fleet as damaged as they were, it would fall to the starfighters to hold them off as long as possible.

“Turn around,” Alecto said abruptly.

“Why?” Cham said, blinking.

“You used to trust me, you know,” Alecto said, cracking her knuckles.

“I could say the same for you,” Cham pointed out, but he did as she said, folding his hands against the edge of his desk and staring down at the scatter of holos that he hadn’t bothered to turn off. One of them was of Hera, a sixteen-year-old Hera in an Imperial cadet’s uniform, her lekku wrapped in strips of white fabric that completely covered her markings. She was sitting on a crate and looking up in the direction of the holocam, her expression wary; the holo hadn’t captured anything around her and Cham had no idea of the context.

He glanced over his shoulder to see Alecto rolling up her sleeves. “You know, if you’re going to stab me in the back, you shouldn’t warn me first.”

“Ha ha,” Alecto said, her voice dry. She flipped his lekku over his shoulders, the touch of her fingers against his bare skin making him shiver slightly. If Alecto noticed, she didn’t mention it. There was no way that she missed his start of surprise as she settled her hands against his shoulders, though. “You know I’d never stab anyone in the back,” she added, her breath shivering against his lekku.

Cham grunted softly as she started to work some of the tension out of his shoulders with her strong pilot’s hands. “I am aware,” he said. “I seem to recall a memorable occasion where you hit Gyzan Free Taa in the face.”

Alecto laughed. “It kept you from calling out Orn Free Taa for corruption, at least.”

“You say that as though it’s a bad thing,” Cham mused. “As I recall, Senator Taa might not have been guilty, but he undoubtedly could have used the scare. A learning experience.”

“I’m sure by now Senator Taa has had quite a few learning experiences, none of which he’s enjoyed,” Alecto observed, doing something with her thumbs that made Cham gasp and then relax as the knots eased out. “Sometimes I feel sorry for him, you know.”

“Do you?” Cham said, startled. “Why? He hardly deserves it, not after what he did to Ryloth.”

“Orn Free Taa didn’t _do_ anything to Ryloth,” Alecto pointed out. “You know as well as I that no senator can really stand up to the Emperor, not even when their world’s soul is at stake. Senator Taa certainly can’t.”

“Because he cares for nothing save his own comfort, least of all Ryloth,” Cham said bitterly. Orn Free Taa was, somewhat astonishingly, still Ryloth’s representative in the Imperial Senate. He was like a chirak, the reptilian pests that were the bane of every home on Ryloth: nearly impossible to kill and of no appreciable use to anyone. “If I had won his Senate seat –”

Alecto snorted softly. “Ryloth did not need you in the Senate. Ryloth needed you on Ryloth.” She pressed the heels of her hands into a knot in his back, making him grunt again. “What would Orn Free Taa have done when Count Dooku’s battle droids came to Ryloth?”

“Rolled over to the Separatists,” Cham said without hesitation.

“He would not have fought for our people,” Alecto said. “And you would have been on Coruscant, unable to do anything. The Senate could do nothing for the worlds under Separatist occupation, you know that as well as I. Ryloth needed a warrior. Our people needed you, Cham, they needed you on Ryloth. Not in the Senate. You could have done no more than Senator Taa ever managed.”

“You don’t know –” She dug her hands in, and he gasped.

“You were saying, my love?”

Cham turned and blinked at her, Alecto already pulling back as she realized what she had said. They stared at each other, neither speaking, the words hanging between them.

“Alecto –” Cham began, and she glanced aside.

“I should go –”

He caught her arm as she started to turn towards the door, releasing her immediately as she went stiff beneath his hand. “You don’t have to go,” he said softly.

“Cham…”

His comlink sounded.

Cham put a hand over his face, grimacing, and turned to fetch it out of the detritus on his desk as Alecto’s shoulders slumped. “This is Syndulla,” he said, trying to keep the irritation out of his voice. He listened to the response and sighed. “Yes, this time she actually is expected, show her here.” He clicked his comlink off and tossed it back down.

“Let me guess,” Alecto said. “Secchun Fenn.”

Cham spread his hands, and she sighed, signaling her displeasure with a flick of her lekku. “I’ll go.”

“Stay,” Cham offered.

Alecto frowned. “With you _and_ Secchun Fenn? I doubt either of you needs a chaperone that badly.” She arched an eyebrow. “Unless there’s something you’re not telling me.”

He grimaced. “I would rather bed a gutkurr. As would she, I suspect.”

“She has been coming over to the _Hope_ quite a lot recently,” Alecto said, her mouth twitching.

“I’m not the Syndulla she’s trying to get someone into bed with,” Cham said. “A proposal that she has, thankfully, seemed to have put to rest, at least for the time being.”

“Presumably she’s waiting until repairs are done on the _Kill_ ,” Alecto observed, but after a further moment of hesitation, balancing for an instant on the balls of her feet, she turned and went over to one of the chairs in the room. She settled into it like a tooka settling onto a cushion, considering the closed door with her eyes narrowed in thought.

There were worse things, Cham thought, even though the armchair was on the other side of the room from him. She could have left.

He busied himself shutting off the holograms running on his desk, not wanting to chance Secchun Fenn seeing his daughter in an Imperial uniform. He thought that she wouldn’t use Hera against him, not with her own son in the same position, but Cham hadn’t lasted this long in a galaxy run mad without taking certain precautions.

Secchun Fenn arrived a few minutes later, sweeping through the door almost as soon as Cham had opened it and leaving a wary Doriah looking at Cham to make certain that she did, in fact, have permission to be here on this particular occasion.

“It’s fine,” Cham told him, and then, guessing the direction of his nephew’s thoughts, added, “It’s not about Xiaan.” He didn’t add what it _was_ about, but he knew that Xiaan had almost certainly told Doriah what she had discovered about Thamir Fenn. As far as Cham had been able to determine, it simply didn’t occur to Xiaan to keep anything from Doriah.

Doriah, on the other hand, never told anyone anything.

Cham was about to shut the door when he realized that what he had initially taken for engine grease – Doriah, like Alecto, had spent most of the past few days in the starfighter bays doing repairs – was actually a bruise, darkening the green skin of Doriah’s forehead and vanishing beneath the band of his headwrap. Now that Cham was looking, he could see that Doriah’s mouth was swollen and, when he glanced down, that his knuckles were bruised. “What happened to your face?”

Doriah met his gaze evenly and said, “I fell down.”

“And the deck punched you?” Cham questioned, lowering his voice so that Alecto and Secchun couldn’t hear.

Doriah spread his hands. “People have been saying the genius of the ship has been getting feisty, so you never know.” He gritted his jaw, looking away from Cham, and said, “You know how this fleet feels about collaborators, or people they think were collaborators. Too many can’t tell the difference between someone who wore a slave collar and someone who made nice with the Imperials because it was convenient, and some of them like to talk about it where I can hear it.”

Cham shut his eyes. “Did Ojeda hear?”

“She’s with Xiaan; I was down in the hangar bays.” Doriah rubbed a hand across his jaw. “You’re not going to hear about it, Uncle, if that’s what you’re worried about. It’s not the sort of thing anyone brings to the Syndulla.”

That Cham knew. There hadn’t been any collaborators in the original Free Ryloth fleet, but they had arrived on other ships as the fleet had grown. He knew as well as any of the others that the situation on Ryloth had been messy, that some people might have been free but hadn’t truly had a choice in what many individuals within the fleet tended to view as treason; few true Imperial collaborators had felt the need to flee Ryloth. Most civilians in the fleet didn’t make any distinction, and there had been beatings and even lynchings he hadn’t heard about until they were over with.

“Doriah –” he began.

His nephew gave him a tight smile. “I have to go, Uncle,” he said, stepping back.

Cham let him go without further protest, since now wasn’t the time to deal with the impossible. He looked back to see that Secchun Fenn had settled on the sofa as far away from Alecto’s armchair as she could manage. She was looking at Alecto as imperiously as possible, presumably waiting for her to get up and offer her something to drink. Alecto, of course, hadn’t moved.

Lacking servants or a protocol droid to do it, Cham got the drinks himself – not tzikeh this time, but the sharper liquor that was brewed down in the Engineering bays. Nobody had died from drinking it in years, so Cham supposed there was a minimal chance that it would actually worsen the meeting. Secchun sniffed her glass warily when he handed it to her, eyebrows and lekku both arching, and said, “I see this is something that’s apparently universal from ship to ship.”

“Have to have something to trade for parts,” Alecto remarked. “The _Hope_ deck crew uses the _Kill_ ’s to clean our starfighters.”

Cham closed his eyes for a moment, then took a sip of the alcohol and managed not to cough. He was fairly certain the _Hope_ deck crew used what they brewed to clean the decks, never mind the starfighters.

Secchun took a cursory taste and blinked, her cheeks hollowing; Alecto held her gaze and didn’t react at all after she had swallowed her sip. Formalities covered, Secchun set her glass aside, folded her hands in her lap, and looked at Cham. “I want to know about my son,” she said. “Tell me about this Project Nemesis, Cham. Tell me what the Empire did to our children after they stole them from us.”

*

By the time that Secchun Fenn finally left the _Mercy Kill_ – bearing copies of the Project Nemesis files on her son Thamir – Cham had a pounding headache that left him wondering if anyone in the fleet would notice or care if he simply locked himself inside his stateroom for the next rotation or ten. As soon as the door slid shut behind Secchun, he leaned forward with his elbows on his knees, his lekku slipping over his shoulders as tried to rub some of the headache away from his forehead.

He heard Alecto get up, then, a moment later, the sound of the tap running in the stateroom’s small refresher. When she came back, he raised his head to see her holding out a chipped glass half-full of water and a couple of pain tablets.

“Don’t get used to being waited on,” she said when he raised a brow.

“Believe me,” Cham said, “I got out of the habit many years ago.” He swallowed the tablets and drank the water, setting the glass down on the crowded table between the couch and the armchair.

Alecto dropped back into her seat on the couch, picking up an empty glass that still smelled of the homebrewed liquor Cham had poured for them earlier. She turned it around in her hands, apparently unwilling to look at Cham, and finally said, “I suppose that could have gone worse.”

There were a lot of things that Cham could have said to that, but the only one he offered was, “Yes, I suppose it could have.”

_At least no one got shot this time._ Which was, Cham supposed, more than he could say about their discovery of Hera. He wondered if Secchun’s inevitable attempt to speak to her son would go any better than theirs had.

There hadn’t been much to say – not as much as Secchun had clearly wanted, not as much as Cham wished that he could tell her. Xiaan had been looking for Syndulla files, not Fenn ones; if there were further files on Project Nemesis amongst the data she had downloaded then she hadn’t found it yet. Thamir Fenn she had only discovered because his name had been buried in the Ryloth files she had been painstakingly working her way through.

“At least now she knows,” Alecto said quietly. She put the glass down and clasped her hands together, not looking at him.

“Yes,” Cham agreed. “Now she knows.” _For whatever peace that may bring her._ At least she could perform funeral rites for her husband now, and send Gatan Fenn’s wandering spirit to meet his ancestors and his oldest son. That was something, at least, and probably more than Secchun Fenn had ever dared hope for. You didn’t need a body to perform the rites.

Cham rubbed his hands across his face, exhausted. His headache was starting to trickle away courtesy of the painkillers Alecto had brought him, but in its place was piling up the sheer weight of the past few days – past few weeks, really.

“So many children,” Alecto murmured. “So many of our children out there, lost somewhere. Stolen from us.” She raised her gaze to his. “Not just Twi’leks, Cham. I saw the files, at least the ones Xiaan managed to find. Togruta, Mon Calamari, Zabrak, Kel Dor – how many of our children did the Empire steal from us? How many hundreds and thousands and millions of our children did they steal?”

“And what did they do with them?” Cham finished for her.

*

“Ezra, come in here.”

Ezra paused on his way out of the cabin he was beginning to think of as his and looked down the short corridor in the direction of the cockpit. Then, with only a little reluctance, he turned away from the doors to the lounge and made his way to the cabin catty-corner to his, where the open door revealed Kanan kneeling on his meditation cushion, his hands resting on his knees and his eyes closed. The only light in the room came from the soft blue glow of the cube thing Ezra had found under his bed, now floating in mid-air in dismantled gold and blue pieces.

“What is that?” Ezra asked.

Without opening his eyes, Kanan said, “A holocron – an information storage device that can only be opened by a Jedi.”

“You’re a Jedi,” Ezra said, venturing a little further into the room.

Kanan inclined his head slightly. As Ezra watched, the cube – the holocron – reassembled itself, the blue glow vanishing as it floated back into Kanan’s raised hand. The lights in the room came on and Kanan opened his eyes. “Sit down.”

The door slid shut behind him as Ezra sat down on the narrow bench across from Kanan, looking from his face to the holocron in his hand. “Yesterday,” he said haltingly, “when you were unconscious, I – do you remember that?”

Kanan nodded.

“Was that real?”

Kanan’s brows knit for a moment, considering the question. Eventually he said, “Real is a matter of perception. The Temple no longer exists as it once did; most of the people in that room are dead now. Not all of them,” he added quietly, “but most of them. One way or another.” He looked down, turning the holocron over in his hands.

Ezra pulled his legs up to sit cross-legged. “What does it mean to be a Jedi?”

“When I was your age, I thought I knew,” Kanan said, his frown deepening. “But that was a long time ago, and that was – after.” His gaze cut sideways; Ezra, following it, saw the two lightsabers and Kanan’s holstered blaster sitting on the neatly made bunk alongside the armor he had worn the day they had met. “I’m not sure what it means now, except that the Empire will try and kill us.”

“Us?” Ezra said.

Kanan raised his gaze to him. “Well, that’s up to you.”

Ezra let his breath out slowly, staring at the holocron in Kanan’s hands. “I made my decision,” he said, his voice hitching a little. “I want to be a Jedi and – and learn the ways of the Force.”

The corner of Kanan’s mouth curled up. “Do or do not,” he murmured, apparently to himself, then straightened up again. He stretched his arm out towards Ezra, the holocron balanced on the palm of his hand. “I know you opened it before,” he said. “Do it again.”

Ezra eyed the thing warily. “Uh – I didn’t really – I wasn’t really doing anything then. It just sort of…did. Open, I mean. And then I couldn’t put it back together after,” he added hastily; when the warning hologram had finished playing, the holocron had reassembled itself, except all the corners had been turned sideways and no amount of twisting and pulling at them had been able to make them go back the way it had been.

“Just concentrate,” Kanan said. “It’s been lonely for a long time. It wants to be opened.”

“It’s _lonely_?” Ezra demanded, jerking his gaze up to him. “How can it be lonely? It’s not alive, it can’t be – wait, _is_ it alive? It’s just a – a data storage thing, right?”

“Not just,” Kanan said. “And no, it’s not alive, but it’s…” He frowned, searching for the words. “Otherwise inanimate objects that are exposed to the Force for a long period of time can develop…personalities, for lack of a better word. Like the Crucible back on Mustafar.” His gaze went hooded, his shoulders slumping. “Places do that too. The Temple was like that. Except I grew up with it, so I never realized it wasn’t normal. They’re all conscious, just a little. Not the way people or animals are, but…in their own ways. And this one’s been with me a long time, even if it’s been sitting in a drawer or a pack for most of it.”

He cupped both hands around the holocron, staring down at it. “A Jedi holocron can only be opened by a Jedi,” he said. “Not just any Force user. No Inquisitor could have opened it; most ferals wouldn’t be able to, either. It’s a good sign that you could.” He held it out again, arching an eyebrow.

Ezra grimaced and shut his eyes, stretching a hand out in the direction of the holocron the way Kanan had taught him what seemed like years ago, even though it had only been a few days. A busy few days.

Almost immediately he felt the bright spark of the holocron in his mind, a wordless greeting that he could only render as _hello hello hello!_ He could see it in his mind’s eye, the corners unlocking in a frenzy of eagerness that barely needed the touch of his own attention, the pieces of it spreading outwards to hang in the air and glow gently blue. He had the brief impression of something that might be a catalogue, filled with things that he didn’t understand – at the top was the hologram of the Jedi master giving his warning.

Ezra opened his eyes again, staring in astonishment. “It worked!”

Kanan grinned at him. “Good job. Now close it.”

He felt the holocron’s disappointment reverberate in his mind and had to close his eyes again, though he could still see it – the rest of the room vanishing around it, except for Kanan kneeling opposite him. He looked different somehow, though Ezra couldn’t put his finger on anything specific.

_I’m sorry_ , he thought at the holocron, and felt it reluctantly closing again, reassembling itself. Ezra opened his eyes to see it float back into Kanan’s outstretched hand. He got a fleeting impression of eagerness; if it had been a Loth-cat he would have said that it had snuggled up to Kanan, but it was still an inanimate object, it wasn’t going to snuggle up to anything.

It was possible that Ezra needed more sleep.

“What’s on it?” he asked. “If it’s a data storage unit –”

Kanan rubbed his thumb over the side of the holocron, studying it. “That’s what I was trying to figure out when you came in. I’ve never really looked at it.”

Ezra blinked. “Why not?”

“My –” His shoulders shifted as he took a deep breath. “My master gave it to me right before she died, right before everything changed. After that I couldn’t be a Jedi and survive in the galaxy, so I put it away with my lightsaber and tried to forget it existed. I spent nine years like that, and then…and then I was an Inquisitor and everything was different then. I didn’t know if it would open for me then and I didn’t want to find out when it refused, and…it’s a thing of the Jedi, do you understand that? If it had rejected me I don’t know if I would have been able to bear it, so it was better not to find out.”

“I don’t understand,” Ezra had to admit.

Kanan lifted his hand again, the holocron unfolding as it drifted to hang in the air between them. In its blue glow Ezra could see the unabashed delight on his face, and something else, something like relief.

After a moment he lowered his gaze from the holocron to Ezra and smiled, easy and comfortable. “You will.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, thanks to my lovely beta Xena.
> 
> I do daily progress reports over on Tumblr, under the tag "[daily fic snippet](http://bedlamsbard.tumblr.com/tagged/daily%20fic%20snippet)," if you want to keep track of what I'm working on or get a hint of what's happening in the next few chapters.


	22. Syndulla's Gamble

“So what is this place?” Sabine asked, leaning around to peer between Kanan and Hera as the _Ghost_ came out of hyperspace. She could see contacts begin to pop up on the boards as they approached, but all that was visible through the viewport was a big amorphous blob that didn’t look like any space station or planet she had ever heard of before. Ezra, in the other passenger seat, was gaping unashamedly. With only four seats in the cockpit, Zeb had gone up to the gun turret to cover their backs in case something went wrong.

“It’s an old asteroid mine that was abandoned during the Clone Wars,” Kanan said. “Local pirates took it over and use it as a clearinghouse – pirates and smugglers can come in and sell their cargoes in a safe port without having to pay import taxes to the Empire or worrying about being arrested. The flightmaster takes a bigger cut than in other ports, but a place like this has its attractions.” He frowned at the viewport for a moment. “Most clearinghouses move around, though; the Empire has a tendency to shut them down whenever the local governors change. Or whenever the flightmasters turn over, which is pretty often. Not a long life expectancy in that job.”

Hera flicked her gaze at him. “You’ve never brought me here.”

“I haven’t been since I was Ezra’s age. I wasn’t certain it was still active, but it came up in one of the security briefings last month.” Kanan frowned again, fiddling with the knuckle plate on his armor.

Sabine was used to seeing him in street clothes on the _Ghost_ , but he had had a tendency to stick to Imperial colors – black, gray, and occasionally red accents. Now he was wearing green, the same shirt and asymmetrical armor he had worn when he had picked up Ezra the other day. Even with the lightsabers on his belt alongside his blaster, he didn’t look like an Inquisitor anymore.

Except in the shoulders. He still carried himself like one, like an Imperial officer; so did Hera. Sabine wasn’t certain that either of them would ever lose that entirely.

“Is it safe?” Hera said doubtfully.

“No.”

“If it’s not safe, then why are we here?” Ezra demanded.

“Nowhere will be safe for us now,” Hera said. “But in a place like this, everyone has something to lose. With any luck, we won’t stand out.”

She fell silent as they approached the former mine, which resolved itself into a lopsided asteroid surrounded by a few dozen ships of varying shapes and sizes, but all bristling with weaponry both legal and illegal. Sabine stood up to get a better view, marking out the points on the asteroid’s surface that seemed to have been damaged by either previous mining actions or what might have been blast marks; she couldn’t tell from here.

“Should we be worried about running into any old friends of yours?” Hera asked Kanan.

He shook his head. “The last time I was here I wasn’t using the name Kanan Jarrus. And I was about two feet shorter.”

“ _You_?” Hera said, looking amused.

Kanan jerked a thumb back over his shoulder in Ezra’s direction. “Shorter than him.”

Kanan was almost Zeb’s height, so there was a moment of silence as they all processed this startling revelation. In the midst of this the comm crackled; Hera answered, and they all leaned in to listen as the spaceport’s flight controller asked them to identify themselves – Hera gave the ship’s name as the freighter _Starbird_ , looking to refuel and resupply – before giving them a landing bay and an approach vector. Hera swung the _Ghost_ around to follow the vector, past the small and mid-size freighters drifting in orbit around the asteroid. Sabine counted them silently as they passed, estimating the size of the clearinghouse against the spaceports she had been to over the last year. They had only been to one shadow port in all that, a space station in the Expansion Region which catered mostly to smugglers and slave stealers. It had been an enlightening experience, if not a pleasant one; Sabine had only been with the _Ghost_ for a few weeks and it had been her first time in a non-Imperial port.

As they approached, Sabine saw that while many of the bays built into the sides of the asteroid were open to space, the faint glow of magnetic shields obscuring the ships within, others were shuttered with heavy metal doors. Hera brought the _Ghost_ into one of the open bays, settling the ship gently down onto the scarred floor.

Zeb came into the cockpit a moment later, pushing Chopper out of the way. “If we have to get out of here fast –” he warned.

“There are enough ships here to blow us all to hell and gone, we know,” Kanan said. He fiddled with his knuckle plate again, glancing at Hera.

She rolled her eyes at him and stood up. “Let’s get this over with.”

Kanan started to follow her out of the cockpit, then paused by the hatch. “Don’t go anywhere alone,” he told them, making Ezra frown and Zeb’s ears flatten. Sabine just felt for the reassuring weight of her blasters.

“Why not?” Ezra asked.

Kanan grimaced. “They run slaves through here, and they’re not picky about where they come from.” Without waiting for a response, he swung himself down the ladder; Sabine heard him land on the deck down below a moment later.

Zeb, Sabine, and Ezra all looked at each other. “Well, that’s…cheerful,” Zeb finally said, his voice rough. He showed a hint of sharp teeth as he scowled, then shook his head and followed Kanan and Hera down the hatch.

Sabine and Ezra climbed down after him, Chopper bringing up the rear. The Ghost’s ramp was already down, Hera and Kanan standing at its base and talking to some Aqualish that Sabine assumed was the clearinghouse’s equivalent of a port master.

“You have business with the flightmaster?” he was saying.

“There’s no need to trouble the flightmaster,” Hera said. “We’re here to refuel and resupply, then we’ll be on our way.”

The Aqualish eyed her doubtfully, reaching up to scratch beneath his tusks. “The flightmaster knows of your arrival,” he said, in his curious slurring, watery voice. “If you think you can hide from her –”

“We’re not trying to hide from anyone,” Kanan said. “And if we _were_ trying to hide from the flightmaster, we wouldn’t have come here. There are plenty of other ports out there.”

Sabine bit her lip on interjecting that in that case they could have _gone_ to any of those other ports, where they probably wouldn’t have been interrogated about their intentions, but restrained herself.

The Aqualish considered Kanan and Hera for a moment longer, then turned his gaze to take in the rest of the crew, hanging back at the top of the ramp. “If you kill anyone from another crew, you’ll have to deal with the flightmaster,” he said.

“That’s fair,” Hera said.

This seemed to be enough for the Aqualish, who turned and walked away without asking any other questions. Hera turned to Kanan and said, “Try not to kill anyone, dear.”

“I’ll attempt to restrain myself,” Kanan said dryly. He looked back, spotted Sabine and the others, and said, “We’ll handle the fuel; you three see about the supplies. I don’t want to be here any longer than we have to.”

“And be careful,” Hera added. “Chop, you stay with the _Ghost_. Don’t let anyone else onboard.”

Chopper saluted her with one arm, grumbling the entire time about being left behind.

“I know,” Hera said. “We shouldn’t be long. Besides, I trust you to keep the _Ghost_ safe.”

Sabine frowned at her, wondering if that meant she didn’t trust Sabine or Zeb to do the same, then decided that of the four of them Chopper was the most likely to kill someone and get dragged up in front of the flightmaster they were all trying to avoid.

This settled, Kanan and Hera started towards the doors, which the Aqualish had left open, revealing a grimy-looking corridor in which a few heavily-armed thugs were lurking, presumably to see if they left the _Ghost_ unlocked or not. Kanan scowled at them as he approached and they scattered, though Sabine wouldn’t have put money on them going far.

They were almost at the door when Kanan turned around. “Hey, kid,” he said, and Ezra perked up.

“Yeah?”

“Don’t steal anything.”

Ezra’s face fell. “I don’t always –”

“Don’t even think about it,” Kanan warned, then left with Hera before Ezra could protest further.

He looked around at Zeb and Sabine, crossing his arms over his chest. “He’s joking. I don’t steal things that often.”

“Yeah,” Sabine said, drawing out the word. “Sure.”

Zeb just shook his head and caught Ezra by the collar. “Come on, you two. Let’s go get some grub.”

*

“Are you doing anything right now?”

_What in the galaxy could I_ possibly _be doing?_ Flower almost replied, but she managed to keep the words from slipping out. Instead she glanced over her shoulder, back into the stateroom where Xiaan had been ensconced on her bunk for the past three days, surrounded by datapads, flimsiplasts, and holograms while she went through the Imperial files recovered from the ISB. Flower was rapidly coming to the conclusion that her cousin was half-droid, since apparently all that actually made sense to her.

She looked back at Numa Bril, who was standing in the corridor outside. The other woman had a black eye and bruised knuckles, which were new from the last time Flower had seen her in the hangar bay after the battle.

“No,” she said. “I’m not doing anything. Why?” she added warily, remembering Doriah’s bruises. Her cousin had refused to talk about where they had come from, and Numa had clearly been in a fight recently.

“Arrow Squadron – my squadron – is on standby for the next six hours,” Numa explained. “I thought you might want to meet some people.” She flicked a familiar, amused glance at Xiaan. “That you aren’t related to, I mean. It’s Doriah’s squadron too, but he’s not there, his Headhunter started throwing error signals so he’s in the hangar with the mechanics.”

Flower hesitated. There were a lot of people on the _Forlorn Hope_ , more than she had been around in years, and all of them were Twi’leks – whom she also hadn’t been around in years. She thought that the only people who had realized that she couldn’t keep up with spoken Twi’leki anymore were Doriah and Xiaan.

When Ojeda Syndulla had been little, she had been inordinately proud of being a curiate, and a Syndulla at that. Even at thirteen she had known the other clans, all the little intricacies of ceremony and tradition that made up the curial clans. She hadn’t been like Hera, who was always off messing around in the garage or sneaking out to race her speeder bike through the desert. She had wanted to be perfect, and she had bent her whole will towards that. She had been furious when Uncle Cham had sent the Family away from Ryloth, because it went against every kind of tradition. She couldn’t be perfect if she wasn’t even on Ryloth.

The Flower of Ryloth had been perfect too, but Flower was all too aware that that had ceased to matter the instant she left Naboo.

“There will be food,” Numa added coaxingly. “I mean, it won’t be particularly good food, but there should be plenty of it.”

“I’m not sure that would be a good idea…” Flower said. She laced her fingers together nervously, then realized what she was doing and clasped her hands behind her back instead.

Numa’s expression suddenly went sober. “It would be – it is. A lot of people have heard you’re onboard now, but almost no one has seen you or talked to you. And you’re a Syndulla.”

“Oh,” Flower said.

“You should go,” Xiaan said suddenly from behind her. “Everyone in Arrow Squadron is nice. And – it’s important for us to be seen.”

“Us,” Flower said blankly, turning to look at her.

“Syndullas,” Xiaan clarified. She set her datapad down, suddenly solemn and looking very like Uncle Cham. “This is a Syndulla ship; almost everyone on it is clan. This is your home. You have to let them see you.”

Flower knew all about being seen, but that was something else. This was about _being_ someone else, and Flower had no idea how to be Ojeda Syndulla.

But she was here. As much as she wanted to go back to the familiar confines of the Lake House, she couldn’t do so, and if she was here then that meant she had to figure out how to be Ojeda Syndulla instead of the Flower of Ryloth. Or at least in addition to the Flower of Ryloth.

“All right,” she said.

Numa looked relieved. Xiaan said, “That’s good. Uncle Cham will be happy.”

Flower blinked. Cham hadn’t given her any indication that there was anything that he wanted her to do on the _Forlorn Hope_ and Flower hadn’t wanted to ask, knowing that there was nothing. She had been trained to do one thing, and she did it very well, but it wasn’t exactly something she could do here. “Will he?”

“Yes,” Xiaan said. “He doesn’t think I get out enough. It’s why Doriah will probably be heir; everyone knows him and trusts him.” She said this matter-of-factly, ignoring the startled look that Flower shot her.

Numa looped her arm through Flower’s and drew her out into the corridor, waving goodbye to Xiaan as she did so.

Flower hadn’t really left the Residency since she had gotten here. Everyone in the Family had their staterooms in this part of the ship’s living quarters, including Cham and Alecto and a host of second and third cousins like Themarsa Pehshan Syndulla, the ship’s doctor, and Neso Cseh Syndulla, whom Flower still remembered playing with when they had both been children. Outside the Residency everyone might have been clan, like Xiaan had said, but they weren’t family. Flower didn’t know any of them – or if she had, it had been so long ago that it might as well have been in another life. _Had_ been another life. Being around them made the back of Flower’s neck prickle.

She was used to the Lake House, which had been the only world she had known for the better part of a decade. Everyone in the House had known everyone else, and the space of Flower’s world had been carefully proscribed, with its own little rituals and ceremonies that Flower knew as well as her own heartbeat. Going on out-calls, which Flower had started doing only a few years earlier, had been terrifying.

This felt just as bad, except that then Flower had known the clients waiting for her and known what was expected from her. Now she had no idea.

“You’re a Syndulla?” she asked Numa; it was the first thing that came to mind, and it meant that she was thinking about something other than the stares she was getting.

Numa nodded. “I’m from Nabat originally; it’s on the western border of the Tann province. We are – _were_ – about three kilometers from being in the Fenn clan lands. Not that it matters now,” she added with only a touch of bitterness.

She tugged Flower aside so that an astromech droid could get past them, followed by a miniature parade of mouse droids – all of them apparently on some sort of mission, though Flower couldn’t imagine what it could be. She supposed she could ask Numa, but didn’t particularly want to admit her ignorance.

Her expression thoughtful, Numa said, “I was just a girl during the Clone Wars – my parents died when the Separatist battle droids occupied Nabat, but I managed to get away. Nobody else did, though. I was on my own for weeks, until the Jedi and their clone troopers came and destroyed all the droids. I just remember feeling so _helpless_ …” She shook her head. “I never want to feel that helpless again.”

“So you came here?”

She nodded. “Free Ryloth was still on Ryloth then. My uncle – he raised me – didn’t want me to join the resistance. But I had to.” She shrugged. “He’s on the _Forlorn Hope_ too, but he didn’t come until after the Curia ostracized the clan.” She went quiet, frowning to herself.

“In here.” The doors slid open as Numa steered Flower towards them; Flower didn’t have a chance to change her mind and back out before she was inside.

It was the same lounge in which they had met in a few days earlier, currently half-full of Twi’leks, most of whom were in flight suits like the ones Numa and Doriah wore, though others were in civilian clothes. Numa led Flower over to a big round table in the corner, where six other Twi’leks were sitting – well, one lilac-skinned girl was sitting in the lap of the woman Numa had seen with Doriah in the hangar after the battle.

“Shove over, Tsachy,” Numa said, releasing Flower to snag a couple of chairs from another table as the other Twi’leks, with some grumbling, moved their seats to make room for the two women. “Sthenno, you remember Ojeda Syndulla, don’t you? Doriah and Xiaan’s cousin.”

The woman with the girl in her lap nodded, leaning over to clasp Flower’s hand. “We weren’t introduced earlier – I’m Sthenno Tre Syndulla.”

“I’m Niale,” said the girl, taking Flower’s hand after Sthenno released her. She eyed Flower with bright curiosity, then looped both arms back around Sthenno’s neck.

The others at the table introduced themselves. Flower carefully fixed their names and faces in her mind; she was generally good at keeping people straight, since clients didn’t like it if you got them mixed up. She had had a lot of trouble with that when she was younger and hadn’t been able to tell humans apart yet, especially since those in the Imperial service tended towards all having a kind of sameness to them. Twi’leks were much easier.

“You’re from the colony?” asked Tsachy after the opening pleasantries were over. He was a tall, skinny young man with burnt orange skin and a darker spotted pattern on his lekku.

“A long time ago,” Flower said. She took the glass that Numa passed her, eyeing the contents dubiously before tasting it and finding that it was lukewarm tsarla tea, sweetened just enough to take the bitterness out.

“Where have you been since then?”

Flower hesitated. Numa gave her an encouraging nod, which was all well and good for her since as far as Flower was aware Numa only knew where she had been, not what she had been doing there.

“I was on Naboo,” she said finally, concentrating on the Twi’leki words. “Onderon before that for a few years, but mostly Naboo.”

“What were you –” Tsachy began, then broke off abruptly. From his expression, someone had kicked him – presumably either Numa on his left or the woman on his right, whose skin was a blue so pale it was nearly white.

Flower licked her lips, looking down at her glass, but before she could decide whether or not to tell them about the Lake House Sthenno said, “I’m sure she doesn’t want to talk about it, you animals.” She spread a hand across Niale’s stomach as the girl leaned her head against her shoulder, lacing her fingers with Sthenno’s.

There was a moment of awkward silence. Flower sipped at her tsarla, then, because she had been trained in small talk as well as pillow talk, said, “Are you all pilots like Numa and Doriah?”

They looked relieved at the change in subject. Sthenno said, “I am, and Tsachy and Nabor.” She nodded at a young man with deep green skin, who had been absently dealing sabacc cards out to himself in a game of patience.

“I’m a marine,” Niale put in. “Deso works in the nursery and Char’s a gunnery officer.”

Flower blinked at this, since Niale was a slight, pretty girl who looked almost as fragile as Xiaan and Deso was tall and broad-shouldered, with burn scars down the side of his face and neck as well as one of his lekku. The other way around seemed more likely, but she wasn’t about to say as much.

“Do you play sabacc, princess?” Nabor asked, sweeping his cards back together and tapping one side of the deck on the table to straighten it. He arched an eyebrow at Flower to let her know that he was addressing her.

Flower set her glass down, relieved to have a question she could answer easily. “Yes. Which variant are we playing?” she added as he began to deal the cards out.

“Corellian Spike?” Niale suggested.

“Empress Teta Preferred,” Deso offered.

“What about Cloud City Casino?” said Numa.

“Which do you want, princess?” Nabor asked. He grinned at Flower, his cheeks dimpling. “Your call.”

Flower had had to learn every known variation of sabacc and a dozen other card games at the House, which occasionally functioned as a casino as well, though more often she had ended sitting in the lap of one guest or another, cooing over his (or occasionally her) cards and offering kisses for luck. She preferred playing, even the times when it ended up being strip sabacc. “What about Twin Suns?”

Nabor’s eyes widened, as did his grin. “Let me get another deck,” he said, and leaned his chair back on its rear legs to say something to the occupants of the table behind him.

“I don’t know that variant,” Sthenno said, frowning.

“It’s what the Hutts play,” Niale said. She started to explain as Nabor came back with another deck of sabacc cards, shuffling them with an experienced hand before he started dealing them out.

“That’s a mean variant, princess,” he told Flower, looking blissful.

“I’m a mean player,” Flower said, and he looked even happier.

“Everyone here always wants to play Corellian Spike or Cloud City Casino,” he said. “Deso –” He elbowed his friend “– keeps suggesting Empress Teta Preferred, but no one else knows it, so we never play.”

“No one knows _this_ variant,” Numa said pointedly, picking her cards up off the table.

“Aww, it’s easy,” Nabor said.

“It doesn’t sound easy,” Sthenno said.

“You’ll get used to it,” Niale said brightly. “Here, we can play together.” She scooped up one of the hands of cards in front of her, pushing the other back across the table towards Nabor, who dealt them back into the deck in front of him.

“That’s not fair,” Char protested. “The rest of us aren’t playing in teams!”

“We’ll do a practice round first,” Nabor said swiftly.

Flower picked up her own hand, considering her cards and feeling herself start to relax. Variants or not, sabacc didn’t change much from place to place, and this was something she knew how to do.

*

The clearinghouse was fascinating.

Ezra hadn’t wanted to admit as much to Sabine and Zeb, who gave off the impression of being seasoned travelers, but until he had taken up with them he had never been off Lothal before, let alone somewhere like the now-former asteroid mine. The first time he had ever been on a starship had been the short hop from his old comm tower to Capital City in the _Phantom_ with Kanan, even if that had been in atmosphere rather than up in space.

The first time he had ever been on another planet had been Mustafar, but he was trying not to think about that.

Ezra had been to the Capital City spaceport before, and he had lurked around the edges of some of the smaller ports that were favored by criminals like Cikatro Vizago’s Broken Horn and some of the other gangs on Lothal, but spaceports were a little too rich for a kid on his own, even in a backwater like Lothal. If they caught you picking their pockets, most spacers would just shoot you and never think twice about it; in the city, Ezra had a better than even chance of being able to escape, or, if that didn’t work out, getting hauled in front of the local authorities. Them he knew he could get away from. Even stormtroopers would just arrest people, not kill them.

Ezra was pretty sure that everyone in the clearinghouse would shoot to kill, and sleep soundly the next night.

Normally he was comfortable in his own skills with his energy slingshot, but right now he was acutely aware of how well-armed everyone else in the clearinghouse seemed to be, and how inadequate his slingshot was in comparison. He and Sabine were the youngest beings he had seen since they had arrived, and he had also, with the wariness of one thief evaluating others, noticed how many speculative glances both they and Zeb got. Ezra got the impression that Zeb was big enough and tough enough that most beings didn’t want to mess with him on even terms, but Lasats were rare. Rare meant expensive, and expensive was something that people would always be willing to go far for. Especially in a shadow port that ran slaves.

But that was a risk even on Lothal, where Ezra had been aware for years that sometimes street kids just disappeared and were never seen again. He knew what parts of Capital City not to go into and which gangs were too dangerous to do business with, because someone like the Broken Horn or the Red Slashers would stun you and sell you to the next smuggler passing through Lothal. There was always a buyer somewhere for something. Everything. All that meant now was that Ezra knew to be careful; he had no inclination to stray away from Zeb and Sabine, even though exploring the clearinghouse would probably be fun. Right before he ended up dead or in a collar.

“I think we overpaid,” he pointed out as they manhandled four massive crates away from the seller they had just finished paying, a rotund Togruta male who was counting the credits they had given him in gape-toothed satisfaction. “You should have let me keep talking him down –”

“What, and be here until next week?” Zeb scoffed. “No thanks.”

Ezra scowled, pushing the crate he had been handed along in front of him. The antigrav’s power was running low and it responded sluggishly, the edges of the crate dipping down at odd moments. It took most of his attention to keep it from veering off into a wall, and all of his strength to turn – which was required frequently in the clearinghouse’s narrow, twisting corridors. “I’m pretty sure I could have bargained him down by at least a hundred credits,” he said. “Neither of you two know how to barter.”

Sabine seemed to be having as much trouble with her crate as he was, but at this she turned around to glare at him. “Kid, we’re trying _not_ to attract attention,” she said. “Getting into an argument with that guy and his goons –”

“Aww, his goons weren’t _that_ impressive,” Zeb pointed out, which Ezra agreed with; they had consisted of a couple of bored-looking Rodians playing sabacc and occasionally flexing.

Zeb, lucky guy, had just tucked a crate under each massive arm; Ezra wished that he was been able to do the same. Barely managing to catch his crate before it crashed into a wall, he said grimly, “Bargaining isn’t arguing! Maybe when you’re the Empire you just _take_ things, but –”

“Kid –” Zeb said warningly, at the same time that Sabine said, “Aren’t you a thief? Isn’t taking things pretty much what you _do_?”

“Hey, I only steal to survive!” Ezra said, then, remembering Kanan’s lightsaber, had to add, “Or if it’s interesting. But mostly to survive!”

“How you survived long enough to run into Kanan –”

“I didn’t ‘run into’ him,” Ezra protested. “He actually _ran after_ me – literally –”

“Kids!” Zeb snapped, his voice suddenly grim. He dropped his crates with a pair of thumps that were swallowed up by the deafening effect of the stone walls around them and reached back over his shoulder for his bo-rifle.

Seeing what he had, Ezra and Sabine both killed the antigrav on their crates, Sabine drawing her blasters and Ezra pulling back the release on his energy slingshot as they turned to survey the corridor behind them. Ezra drew back his lips in a snarl; he was out of the habit of actually talking to people and hadn’t been paying attention to what was going on around them. They had been flanked by a couple of blue-skinned Pantorans and a sleek-furred Zygerrian male who were all toting heavy blasters; in front of them, the corridor had been cut off by another Zygerrian, this one female, with a trio of Trandoshans behind her.

“Hello, Lasat,” said the female Zygerrian, and gave them a smile that showed off her sharp incisors. “I haven’t seen one of you in a while.”

“Slaver scum,” Zeb snarled, snapping the bo-rifle out into staff form and activating both ends. The resultant buzz of energy made the hair on the back of Ezra’s neck stand up.

He shifted backwards until the backs of this thighs touched the crate behind him, his fingers holding the energy sling taut. Sabine raised her blasters, her voice filtered through her helmet as she said, “Listen, we don’t want any trouble –”

“Speak for yourself,” Zeb growled.

Ezra looked back over his shoulder to see the Zygerrian woman smile. “Trouble?” she said. “Why should there be any trouble? I just want to talk. Perhaps offer you…new employment.”

“Not interested,” Zeb said shortly.

“I can be very persuasive.”

“So can I.” He swept the bo-rifle forward in front of him, making the two nearest Trandoshans flinch back and then hiss at their own reactions. “You really want to have _that_ conversation?”

Even the Pantorans and the Zygerrian blocking Ezra and Sabine were watching Zeb, more interested in him than the two beings they had probably already written off as a pair of harmless kids, well-armed or not. Ezra was trying to figure out if he could use that somehow when he caught movement in the corner of his eye and turned his head slightly to see Sabine trying to get his attention with little jerks of her helmet.

“What?” he said in a low voice.

She was gripping one of her blasters a little oddly, and as he looked at her she opened her fingers to show off the thermal detonator she was holding.

Ezra gaped at her. Most of what he knew about explosives came from holovids rather than personal experience, but even he was pretty sure that setting off a bomb in here was more likely to result in the tunnel collapsing in around them than anything that might allow them to escape.

“Are you insane?” he hissed.

He couldn’t read her expression with her helmet, but he had a fleeting impression of something that might have been annoyance. _Is that the Force?_ he wondered, distracted for a moment, then shoved the thought away. He could ask Kanan later.

Well, if they survived this.

He glanced back over his shoulder again at Zeb and the Zygerrian. He had missed what they had been saying, but the Zygerrian had stepped back, letting the Trandoshans move forward. Zeb growled low in the back of his throat, a sound that seemed to vibrate in Ezra’s bones.

Something told him _now_ and Ezra swung back around, his fingers tight on his slingshot as the Pantorans raised their blasters. Then Sabine flung the detonator.

*

Hera had worried that fuel would be difficult to come by even at a shadow port that seemed to have dozens of ships arriving and departing every day, but the fuel turned out to be the easy part. It cost more than it would have done at any other port, despite the absence of the Imperial tax. Hera gritted her teeth, exchanged a look with Kanan – from his expression, he had just done the same calculations she had – and paid, glad that she had kept up the habit of keeping a store of hard credits aboard the _Ghost_ , rather than relying on Imperial credchips. The first thing that the ISB would do upon realizing she had deserted was freeze the bank accounts she had access to. And that was if they hadn’t already done so the moment she had been suspended.

Not, she knew, that anyone at a shadow port would have trusted a credchip when there was a possibility of hard credits to hand.

Once the fuel had been delivered to the _Ghost_ ’s docking bay, she and Kanan set off to find the second, more valuable commodity that they had come to the clearinghouse for. Hera just hoped that it wouldn’t cost as much as the fuel had.

Hera had been to a lot of shadow ports since she had taken up with Kanan, and in many ways the clearinghouse was much like the others she had seen. Without Imperial regulations requiring frequent upkeep and up-to-date equipment – not to mention the Spaceport Beautification Bill that had been passed the year before, cementing Hera’s opinion that the Imperial Senate was a waste of time and taxpayer credits – the port had fallen into disrepair. Though, given the fluctuating gravity and the roughly cut corridors, Hera wasn’t certain that there had actually been all that much going for it even when it had been a functioning mine. Many corridors were dimly lit, a number of their lumas burnt out and never replaced, while ancient cleaning droids worked over the same patch of moldy floor without accomplishing anything. Everything Hera looked at had a thin film of greasy mold over it, making her sneeze at irregular intervals.

They passed beings of various species, most of them presumably either smugglers or pirates, though Hera identified others as slaves by the collars they were wearing and a few particularly grimy-looking sorts as dock thieves. They eyed Hera and Kanan covetously, but backed off when Kanan glanced at them, his lip curling upwards in something that wasn’t quite a snarl. For an instant he was as much a predator as they aspired to be, a nexu clothed in human skin. They scattered.

Naturally, the twisting confusion of the asteroid’s cross-corridors didn’t boast a map, or at least not one that Hera and Kanan had run across yet. She was starting to wonder if they had gotten lost and whether they could find their way back to the _Ghost_ when they abruptly walked into a wide open cavern that, like the surrounding corridors, had been hewn out of the surrounding rock. Unlike those, however, this one was filled with people, many of them gathered around what Hera thought was a bar and others watching the scantily-clad Twi’lek and Zabrak dancers on a makeshift stage at the far side of the room. It was raised up enough that even from here Hera could see the collars around their necks, and she glanced aside, her jaw tightening.

“This seems likely,” she said to Kanan. “See anyone you know?”

She was only half-joking. Kanan had crossed a lot of the galaxy before he had met her, most of it spent in spaceports as grimy as this one; over the past eight years they had run into former acquaintances of his in the most unexpected places and at the most unexpected times.

He quirked an eyebrow at her, but glanced around the room. “No,” he said. The corner of his mouth curled up, and he added, “Buy you a drink?”

“I have the feeling anything here runs a serious risk of being toxic,” Hera said dubiously, but fell in beside him as they made their way to the bar, which seemed to be made out of the chassis of an old mining droid.

“Aww, that’s just to wake you up,” Kanan said. He held up two fingers as they approached and the Letaki bartender handed over two glasses, turning away before Kanan could give him the credits he had reached for. He shrugged and passed one to Hera. “Must be on the house.”

Hera tasted the liquor dubiously; she was pretty sure that this stuff could be used to strip paint off the _Ghost_. Kanan, more used to bad alcohol than she was, just tossed his back and set the glass down on the bar. As the Letaki turned back to him, reaching for a pitcher with one of its – his? her? Hera had never been able to tell their gender, since she had only seen one twice before – tentacles, Kanan leaned an elbow on the bar and said, “You guys get much news out here?”

Hera had never learned the Letaki language, so she turned away as the bartender replied, leaning back against the bar and looking around the room while pretending to sip her liquor. The fumes made her cough.

She glanced sideways as an older Weequay male sidled up beside her. He was wearing a gray and red bodysuit, a three-cornered cap over thick goggles, and an ostentatious belt buckle, and Hera prepared herself to toss her drink in his face if the occasion called for it.

“Hello, pretty lady!” he said brightly. “I haven’t seen you and your friend around here before.”

“We’re just passing through,” Hera said, smiling tightly. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Kanan flick a glance at her before turning his attention back to his conversation with the Letaki.

“Your first time? Hondo can give you the tour!”

“We’re not really planning on staying that long.” Hera eyed him, then accidentally took a real sip of her drink and coughed.

The Weequay – Hondo, apparently – whisked the glass out of her hand. “Your first mistake – never drink the house liquor.” He sniffed at what was left of the alcohol, then knocked it back. “Unless you’re used to it!” He slapped the glass down on the bar and grinned at her. “You and your friend are new here? Looking for a crew? Looking for cargo? Not looking for a ship, I hope.”

“I have my own ship and crew,” Hera said. “I’m Captain Hera Syndulla.”

For an instant Hondo’s vague gaze went sharp behind his goggles and Hera tensed, bracing herself to go for her blaster. Then he said, “Ah, from the fleet! Free Ryloth, yes?”

At this, Kanan turned his head. He didn’t reach for his lightsaber, but there was a certain shift in his stance that suggested he could have it in hand within heartbeats, before Hondo or anyone else here even had a chance to get another syllable out.

Hera put a hand on his wrist, feeling his pulse beating light and fast beneath her fingertips. “No,” she said, “we’re not from the fleet. I’m – a different Syndulla,” she added, with a pang at the lie. Even when she had been in the Academy she hadn’t tried to pretend she wasn’t related to her father, though in the early days Ryloth hadn’t yet been galactic news, so few other cadets had known who Cham Syndulla was. It was only after he had left Ryloth that he had really started making HoloNet headlines.

“You know about the Twi’lek fleet?” Kanan said.

Hondo tapped a finger against the side of his nose. “Hondo knows something about everything, my friend.”

“Do you know where it is now?”

The words were out before Hera could stop herself. She flushed as Kanan shot her a sharp look, but since she had already asked the question there was no way to back down or pretend that she had meant something else.

“Alas, I do not,” Hondo admitted. “But for the right price, I can find out!” He added this with a dramatic flourish of his hands, making Hera lean back against Kanan’s shoulder to avoid being struck.

“That’s not necessary,” she said.

Hondo shrugged, apparently unbothered by the rejection. “But perhaps Hondo can be of more help to your friend?”

Kanan arched an eyebrow. “How’s that?”

The Weequay gestured at the lightsaber on his hip. “Hondo has always been a great friend to the Jedi,” he said.

Kanan’s only reaction was a slow blink, though Hera knew him well enough to be aware of his shoulders tightening, his muscles bunching as he prepared to go for a weapon. “That’s a funny thing to say,” he said. “Everyone knows the Jedi and their friends are all dead.”

Hondo’s brows arched beneath the brim of his cap. “ _All_ the Jedi?” he said. “I know a Jedi when I see one and you, my friends –”

“We’re not your friends,” Hera said.

“That can change!”

“And we’re not buying whatever you’re selling,” Kanan said. “So if I were you, I’d –” He stopped abruptly.

Hera shot a startled look at him, but she didn’t have time to react further before a cold blaster barrel settled at the back of her skull, just like the one pointed at Kanan’s head.

She turned her head a little, slowly, to see a mixed species group of beings leveling blasters at them. There were about seven of them, human and near-human, all well-muscled and well-armed. Going by the way that silence was spreading through the bar, people stopping their conversations to stare and the Letaki bartender backing away, this had to be what passed for local security around here.

“Hera Syndulla and Kanan Jarrus,” said the broad-shouldered Pantoran male holding his blaster on Kanan. Kanan had one hand on his lightsaber hilt, but he hadn’t taken it off his belt yet. “The boss wants to see you.”

*

The sound of Ahsoka’s comlink woke her out of an uneasy sleep filled with dreams of fire and some half-remembered planet she was certain she had been to before. She scrubbed a hand over her eyes, listening to the beeping in the close dark of her cabin, then groped blindly for her comlink before giving up and holding out a hand for it. It flew across the room and slapped into her palm, and she said blearily, “What?”

_“Ahsoka! So good to hear your voice!”_

Ahsoka rubbed her free hand over her face. “Hondo.”

_“I knew you were still alive!”_ Hondo Ohnaka said brightly. _“Why, I was telling someone just today that all the Jedi weren’t dead.”_

“I’m not a Jedi anymore,” Ahsoka said automatically. Still trying to drag herself out of sleep, she added, “Why would you – what? Who?”

_“Very personable young man – well, a little prickly, but these days who can blame him? Or his lovely captain?”_

Ahsoka sat up, flicking her free hand at the lights to activate them. “Hondo, what are you talking about? Where are you? Why are you contacting me?” She blinked. “How did you get this frequency?”

_“Never mind those little details! If there is one thing I know – well, besides piracy, of course – it’s a Jedi when I see one, and when I saw him, I thought, ah, I know who would pay handsomely for this information –”_

Ahsoka blinked, suddenly wide awake. “A Jedi? Hondo, you found a Jedi? Who? Where?”

He made a pointed noise of reminder. _“Well, for the right payment –”_

“Assuming that you actually have anything of value, I can arrange payment,” Ahsoka said. “But you still haven’t given me any indication that you actually have something.”

_“Ahsoka! You wound me to the quick! We go back so far, how could you possibly not trust my word –”_

“Because I’ve met you, Hondo.” She sighed. “And you’ve met me. You know that if your information’s good, then you’ll get your credits, or spice, or whatever it is you want.”

He made a thoughtful humming noise in the back of his throat, apparently considering this proposal. _“Very well,”_ he said finally. _“Do you know Viest’s clearinghouse in the Mid Rim?”_

Ahsoka racked her brain. “I’ve heard of it before, I think,” she said finally. “That’s pirate territory – friends of yours?”

_“Not exactly.”_ From his tone, Ahsoka guessed that the clearinghouse catered to pirates that were more successful than Hondo was at the moment – not that that was particularly difficult. _“If you want to catch your friend, I suggest you get here quickly.”_

“You haven’t told me yet that there’s anyone I actually want to find,” Ahsoka reminded him, but she climbed out of her bunk, wincing as her bare feet hit the cold deck. She stepped out of her cabin into the narrow corridor and made her way down to the cockpit, where QT-KT had been at low power in the corner. Her photoreceptors lit up as she came to full power, chirping a question as Ahsoka checked their current coordinates. They were in hyperspace, still on their way to rendezvous with the Free Ryloth fleet; Ahsoka would have to drop out of hyperspace in order to plot a new jump. 

Hondo hesitated, presumably weighing the benefit of actually getting her to the clearinghouse – Ahsoka suspected that he was currently stranded there and that part of his payment would involve a ride to the nearest port – versus giving up valuable information. Finally, he said, _“Does the name Kanan Jarrus mean anything to you?”_

Ahsoka went still, her hands clenching on the controls. Struggling to keep her voice calm, she said, “Was there a Twi’lek woman with him?”

_“Ah, you do know him!”_ Hondo said. _“Yes, a lovely green lady, very polite.”_

The last Ahsoka had heard, both Caleb Dume – or Kanan Jarrus – and Hera Syndulla had still been on Lothal. Clearly something had changed in the past few rotations, but she had no idea what it was. Except for the rumors that kept coming over the Imperial HoloNet relays she had tapped into, the whispers from Mustafar – the whispers that no one seemed to know anything further about. Ahsoka had been trying to get in touch with Barriss, but had so far been unsuccessful. She wasn’t even being rebuffed, just ignored.

That was if Barriss was even still alive. If the vids she had given Ahsoka of Dume’s training at the Crucible were any indication, the Inquisition played rough as a matter of course; she could have died in the line of duty or been murdered by another Inquisitor. Or whatever had happened on Mustafar had claimed her life.

Ahsoka thought she was still alive. She had nothing specific to pin that on, just a feeling in the Force, but she thought that she would know if Barriss had been killed.

“Are they there with you now, Hondo?” she asked.

_“Er – not exactly,”_ he admitted, and Ahsoka rolled her eyes. _“But they are here!”_ he added in a way that was clearly meant to be reassuring. _“Ahsoka, please! When have I ever steered you wrong?”_

“Do you want that list chronologically or alphabetically?” Ahsoka muttered, then, louder, “I’m on my way. Do what you can to keep them there, but –” She hesitated for a moment, wondering whether to tell Hondo this much, but if he was going to sell Dume and Syndulla out to the Empire then he had probably made that call before he had contacted her and it was already a lost cause. “Be careful. Kanan Jarrus is dangerous.”

_“Really?”_ Hondo said, sounding more intrigued than concerned.

“Really,” Ahsoka said. “I’ll contact you once I’ve reached the clearinghouse.”

_“What do I get for keeping them here until you arrive?”_

“I’ll double your fee,” Ahsoka said.

_“I haven’t told you what it is yet!”_

“Well, whatever it is, I’ll double it.” She could get the money somewhere, assuming that it was money Hondo wanted. “Tano out.”

*

By the time the meeting ended, it was some absurd hour in the fleet’s night cycle and Cham was ready to personally shoot every member of the Synedrion himself and declare himself a dictator. It might lead to a civil war in the fleet, but at least it would cut down on the bureaucratic infighting, and at the moment Cham was prepared to make that sacrifice. For that matter, Alecto, who had attended the meeting for once, looked ready to hand him the blaster.

Fleet protocol, which Cham and his original captains had set up eight years ago when they had left Ryloth, called for the fleet to jump and then jump at least three more times after a battle like the one they had just had, in order to make certain that the Empire wasn’t tracking a particular ship. Unfortunately, they were still in the same system they had originally jumped to. Although all the ships with the fleet had been able to make the original hyperspace journey during the battle, several of the hyperdrives seemed to have failed in the immediate aftermath; the failures had been deprioritized by the automated systems since most ships were still repairing battle damage, and had only just come to light. Accusations of treason and sabotage had been flung around during the Synedrion meeting; even the chief engineers on most of the affected ships seemed uncertain what had happened. Cham was inclined to agree with the _Forlorn Hope_ ’s chief engineer, who thought it was simple incompetence coupled with battle stress. Most of the people in the fleet, including the ships’ crews, had never expected to spend this long in space without access to a proper dock and the kind of regular upkeep that was normally standard.

The resulting argument had gone on for the better part of five hours, ended with demands for equipment, repairs, and the money to pay for equipment and repairs, and left Cham exhausted from moderating without yelling. The other Syndulla captains hadn’t been any help; Syndulla’s ships were in better shape than most, which meant that representatives from the other clans had taken this as a sign of both favoritism on Cham’s part and obligation to help more damaged ships. The Syndullas had not taken these assertions well.

He was so tired that it hurt, exhaustion weighing down every muscle in his body, so that even the usually unnoticeable weight of his lekku felt like too much to bear. He knew that by any objective standard he was lucky; he hadn’t been injured during the battle, nor had anyone in his immediately family been hurt or killed. The _Forlorn Hope_ ’s losses had been under the initial estimate, as had the Syndulla clan’s. If it had just been Syndulla that Cham had to concern himself with, he could have dealt with that, but instead it was the fleet, and at the moment that weight felt crushing.

“Cham.”

He couldn’t stop himself from flinching as Alecto laid a hand on his arm; he had forgotten that she had come back to his stateroom with him. He shook his head, lekku swaying, and turned to face her.

She looked back at him with steady green eyes. “You need to rest,” she said. “Pilots and crew have mandatory off-duty hours so that we can sleep. You shouldn’t let yourself be on call all the time either.”

“If only,” Cham said reluctantly. “Unfortunately I don’t have that luxury.”

Alecto frowned. “You’ll do the fleet no good if you’re exhausted,” she said. “And the fleet needs you, Cham. I know that you like to think it doesn’t, that it will carry on without you, but without you it won’t last out the year.”

“Mishaan –”

“Mishaan is a patriot,” Alecto said. “Her loyalty is to Free Ryloth, to this fleet. She will burn for it, if she has to, no matter what the cost, and one time I might have called you the same.” She took her hand off his arm and crossed her arms across her chest, but she didn’t look away from him. “But I know you, Cham Syndulla. You will wear yourself to a thread for Ryloth, even if doing so means that you die for it.”

Cham raised one brow. “I’m hardly on the verge of dying of exhaustion.”

Alecto raised her own brows in response. “The pilots are required to sleep,” she said. “You should as well. I’ll make sure you’re not disturbed, and if anyone in the Synedrion has a problem with that, they can take it up with me.”

When he hesitated, she added, “Or should I make that an order, General Syndulla?”

“I thought I was in charge of this fleet,” Cham said, though the words were marred by a yawn that he couldn’t hold in. “Shiri Teksa is supposed to comm about getting engineers from the _Hope_ or the _New Dawn_ over to the _Teksa Dream_ –”

“Mishaan can deal with that; they’re her officers,” Alecto said, her tone steely. “Give me your comlink and rest, Cham Syndulla. Let someone else carry that weight for a few hours.”

Cham hesitated, then pulled his comlink off his belt and handed it to her. Alecto accepted it and put it in her pocket; Cham couldn’t read her expression, couldn’t get any sense of what was going through her head at the moment. As she turned to go, he said, “I don’t believe that I said thank you.”

She turned back. “For what?”

“Coming to that Synedrion meeting with me. I don’t –” He hesitated, but she was already looking at him inquisitively, so he forged on. “I don’t remember the last time that you did.”

Alecto blinked. “The Synedrion likes to waste its time arguing over things that aren’t worth arguing about,” she muttered. “And you still haven’t.”

“What?”

“Said thank you. Though I didn’t do it for you.”

“I doubt you did it for the clan, either,” Cham said, but added, “Thank you, Alecto.”

She dipped her chin in acknowledgment, but her cheeks were a little flushed. She turned again, and Cham blurted out, “You could stay.”

“What?”

He wished that he could take the words back almost as soon as he had said them, but he had said them, and at least Alecto hadn’t reacted by storming out without bothering to respond. “You could stay,” he said again.

“I’m on call,” she said slowly.

“If you’re called in, then I will be as well,” Cham pointed out. “And it’s not as though I’m the one who took _your_ comlink.”

Alecto tipped her head in acknowledgment, then turned back to the door. Cham felt his heart drop, disappointment settling heavy in his chest until Alecto touched the locking mechanism on the control panel. She squared her shoulders before she turned around, like she was bracing for a fight, but Cham didn’t say anything, and after a moment she stepped across the room towards him.

Her fingertips brushed briefly against his as they went together into the bedroom. She sat down on the bed to undo her bed as Cham stepped into his tiny refresher; when he came out a few minutes later she was still there, her boots now kicked haphazardly aside. She was holding something in her hands; Cham had to step closer to see that it was a twenty-year-old hologram from when Hera had been small, of the three of them standing by Alecto’s racing pod at some race or another. Hera was wearing her mother’s helmet and standing on the pod’s hood, while Cham and Alecto in her racing gear were standing beside her, balancing her with a hand on each shoulder.

That had been before the Clone Wars, before the Separatists had been more than a distant cloud on the Republic’s horizon and the Empire was unthinkable. They looked young and hopeful and as though they still had their whole lives ahead of them, not yet narrowed down by choice and circumstance to a single set of options.

“I’d forgotten about this,” Alecto said softly, glancing up at the sound of his step. “You never mentioned it.”

“There was nothing to say,” Cham said. He sat down on the bed beside her, reaching down to pull his boots off. “There was nothing I could have said.”

Alecto was quiet for a moment, then she twisted around to set the holoprojector back on the shelf above Cham’s bed. She folded her hands between her knees, her eyes half-closed as she said meditatively, “I miss racing.”

Dangerous as pod racing was, Cham had been glad when she had stopped, but he wasn’t about to say it now. He missed the days when the worst thing he had to worry about had been Alecto’s races, never mind his grandmother’s concerns over whether or not pod racing was sufficiently dignified for a curiate’s wife to partake in. She had still been alive when they had married; Cham had only been a junior public official at the time, not then clan head and Syndulla’s elector in the Curia. Ananke Syndulla had liked Alecto, Cham remembered that. She hadn’t lived to see Hera born.

“Flying is all right,” Alecto went on slowly, “but it’s not the same. Vacuum always makes me a little uneasy, after all this time; I miss gravity.” Her mouth twisted. “That’s funny, isn’t it?”

“I don’t think it is,” Cham said. “You loved pod racing. And you trained in gravity. Vacuum jockeys like Doriah – they trained in space.”

Alecto shrugged gracelessly. She turned to look at him, something shy in the set of her shoulders, and put her hand over his. She said slowly, “You need to rest, Cham.”

“You’ll let me know if anything happens?” Cham asked. He wanted to ask her not to leave, but he knew better than to do so.

She nodded solemnly and squeezed his hand before releasing it. “I will. Go to sleep, Cham.”

“Thank you,” Cham had to tell her as he settled down.

After a moment of hesitation, Alecto laid down beside him, fussing with the blankets until she had them arranged to her liking. They had slept together on and off since she had come back, but the last time had been well over a year ago. Cham had become accustomed to an empty bed long before that.

“Don’t get used to it,” Alecto muttered, but she was a warm, familiar weight beside him as Cham closed his eyes. Exhaustion rose up over him like a wave; he was asleep almost immediately.

*

The local muscle didn’t bother taking their weapons, which Hera decided to take as a cautiously positive sign. Hondo backed away from them as they were escorted away from the bar under the curious gazes of the other patrons, but as they left the music started up again; glancing over her shoulder she saw the Zabrak and Twi’lek dancers moving again.

“So this flightmaster,” Hera said in an undertone to Kanan. “Who is he? Have you met him before?”

He frowned a little. “Sort of,” he said. “I mean, I was there. Big Zygerrian, ran this place and the rest of the sector like it was his own personal kingdom – like a lot of Imperial governors we’ve met.” He raised his eyebrows meaningfully. “You know the type.”

Hera did. “Any idea why he wants to see us? Besides –” She glanced at their escort, none of whom seemed to be paying any attention to their conversation.

Kanan grimaced. “Maybe he likes the _Ghost_ and wants to compliment your flying.”

“That sounds very unlikely, dear.”

“Hey, you never know.”

Hera felt the gravity fluctuate as they descended further into the asteroid; she barely kept her balance, and Kanan gritted his teeth, looking irritated. As she had noticed earlier, the air quality varied from corridor to corridor, sometimes warm and foul, sometimes stale, sometimes almost clear. The former asteroid mine might be the flightmaster’s own private kingdom, but Hera didn’t think much of it.

The gravity returned to something almost normal as they descended a ramp into a big open room filled with grungy-looking couches and a few holoconsoles. The air was clearer here; Hera assumed that they were getting closer to the flightmaster’s private chambers, which were presumably the best-kept in the entire clearinghouse.

Their escort led them across the chamber onto a shadowy walkway that crossed a dark cavern from whose walls scaffolds protruded; presumably they had once supported walkways of their own. Hera and Kanan descended a set of stairs into a big chamber whose clear transparisteel windows and gutted wall consoles suggested that it must have been the mine’s former operations center. At the center of the room was a raised platform with a couple of comfortable chairs and a half-moon shaped table on it; other chairs and couches were scattered around , lush and rich-looking but of wildly differing styles. Zeb, Sabine, and Ezra were standing to one side of the platform, while a couple of Zygerrians were standing on the other; on the platform itself was a tall, slender human woman whom Hera knew immediately had to be the flightmaster. Apparently there had been some turnover since the last time Kanan had been here.

“I thought I told you to stay out of trouble,” Kanan said to Zeb as they approached.

“It wasn’t my fault!” Zeb protested.

One of the Rodians beside him was holding his bo-rifle, while another had Sabine’s blasters tucked through his belt and her ammo pouch slung over his shoulder. Ezra still had his energy slingshot, but Hera wasn’t surprised that no one in this crowd had considered it enough of a threat to take away.

“This Lasat belongs to you?” said the Zygerrian woman who seemed to be the leader of the other group. She looked Kanan and Hera over, her expression suggesting doubt.

“He _belongs_ to himself,” Hera snapped. “If you’re asking if he’s part of my crew, the answer is yes. And who are you, anyway?”

The Zygerrian drew herself up. “I am Captain Ylona Tiraj –”

“She’s a slaver,” Sabine spat, glaring across the room at her. She had her helmet tucked under her arm; Hera glanced at the fresh carbon scoring on it and frowned.

“If you’ve hurt my crew –”

“Your crew set off an explosive that could have collapsed a corridor,” said the human woman on the dais.

“It was just a flash-bang!” Sabine snapped. “No structural risk – and I can’t believe you’re worried about the architecture when you’ve got slavers running around –”

“Sabine?” Hera said.

“Yeah?”

“Not now.”

Sabine’s jaw set. Ezra shifted uneasily, clearly unhappy about being here. Hera couldn’t blame him; she wasn’t particularly happy about being here either.

“Leave,” said the woman on the dais abruptly. “Not you,” she added to Kanan and Hera.

She turned her back on them, striding to one of the seats and arranging herself in it. As Tiraj and her companions scowled and started for the doorway, followed by Zeb, Sabine, and Ezra, Hera mounted the steps to the dais, Kanan just behind her.

“I am Captain Aral tukor Viest,” said the flightmaster. “And you, I assume, are Hera Syndulla and Kanan Jarrus.”

“That’s right,” Kanan said. He dropped onto a couch, stretching out his long legs; Hera sat more stiffly beside him, the back of her neck prickling.

“I don’t know you,” said Viest, “and I’ve never heard of your ship before. How did you learn about us?”

“I used to crew on the _Kasmiri_ under Janus Kasmir about fifteen years ago,” Kanan said carefully. “We came through here a couple of times, back when Ingan dire Stane was the flightmaster.”

“We’re just passing through,” Hera said. “All we want to do is buy fuel and supplies and then move on. We don’t want any trouble.”

“Now that,” Viest said, “is the problem.” She leaned back, the lights in the room winking off the small metal studs embedded in her temples and cheekbones. They were etched with elaborate designs and placed to draw attention to the scar slashing across her face. “I find myself with something of a conundrum, Hera Syndulla. You see, the Empire has just issued an impressively large bounty for your arrest – yours and all your crew, even that little droid you left back with your ship.”

Kanan and Hera exchanged a look, his hand drifting close to his lightsaber. Viest’s gaze went to him, sharp and considering.

“I wouldn’t think that you’d want to do business with the Empire,” Hera said. “I’m under the impression that they aren’t fond of pirates, and I doubt that they would look kindly on your set-up here.” Unless, of course, Viest had an “understanding” with whoever the local governor was, which Hera had seen before in other sectors. At least she was fairly certain that none of the pirates in the clearinghouse would look kindly on an Imperial star destroyer coming out of hyperspace here, so Viest couldn’t hand them over directly, if that was what she was planning. Hera hoped.

Viest only raised an eyebrow in response. “On the other hand,” she said, “Cham Syndulla of Free Ryloth is also offering a very large reward for any news of you – what interest does he have in you, by the way?”

“He’s my clan head,” Hera said, her blood suddenly pounding in her ears. “I didn’t get his permission before I left. Legally, he still has a claim on me.”

The woman looked interested. “So you’re his property.”

“I’m no one’s property,” Hera said coldly. “It’s a legal formality, nothing more.”

“I wouldn’t think that a woman like you cared about either the Empire or the Free Ryloth fleet,” Kanan said. “You’ve got a pretty nice set-up here.”

Viest inclined her head in acknowledgment of the veiled compliment. “We do business with Free Ryloth from time to time,” she said. “Cham Syndulla is an elitist bastard who believes in the superiority of Twi’leks above all, but he always pays well.”

“We’re in agreement on the former,” Hera said. “The Syndulla and I don’t get along.”

“I see,” said Viest politely. She eyed Kanan and Hera again, her gaze veiled, though Hera had the impression that they were being evaluated like cuts of nerf steak in the market.

Kanan clasped his hands together on top of his knees and leaned forward, radiating earnestness. “Listen,” he said, “we don’t want any trouble. If you call the Empire, then they’ll come in here guns blazing. They’ll take this whole place no matter what kind of bargains you’ve made with them, because the guys showing up here won’t be whatever sector officers you’ve made deals with. Trust me, Captain Viest – you don’t want to meet them.”

“Because you’re an Imperial deserter?” she inquired.

Kanan quirked a grin. “Just my winning personality, sweetheart.”

Hera rolled her eyes, but said, “You don’t owe any allegiance to my – to the Syndulla.” Cursing herself for the slip, she went on, “However much money Cham Syndulla is offering you, is it really worth losing the trust of the ships and crews who do business through here? You can’t keep something like that secret. I know how places like this work, Captain. This isn’t a matter of one crew fighting another in the halls here. It’s handing over a ship and crew who have never done anything to you to a rebel fleet.” She put her head to one side, considering, and added, “It won’t take long for the Empire to find out about that, either. And I’m sure you’d know how they would view that.”

“We’ve done nothing to you or yours,” Kanan said. “We just want to get our supplies and be on our way. You lose nothing by just letting us go, and then we’ll never darken your doorstep again.”

Viest was silent, considering them. Finally, she said, “You have until the end of the rotation to leave the clearinghouse. If you choose to remain longer, then I can’t speak for what may happen.”

Hera stood, Kanan only a beat behind her. “Thank you. We’ll be on our way as soon as possible.”

They left the room before Viest had a chance to change her mind. Once they were on the walkway again, and out of her hearing, Hera said in a low voice, “What do you think?”

“I think if she didn’t call them both before we walked in there she called them as soon as we walked out.”

“My thoughts exactly. Let’s get out of here.”

They emerged into the antechamber. The Zygerrian captain and her companions weren’t there any longer, but Ezra, Zeb, and Sabine all were, being watched over by a group of Viest’s thugs.

“So?” Sabine said as soon as she had spotted them. “Are we in trouble?”

“We’re free to go,” Hera said. “So you can give my crew their gear back,” she added to the nearest of the thugs, the same Pantoran who had put his blaster to Kanan’s head. He was lucky that Kanan didn’t hold grudges, Hera thought.

“Just like that?” Zeb said, snatching his bo-rifle back from the Rodian who had been inspecting it covetously. “What about that slaver?”

“I didn’t ask. We’re leaving.”

“What about the supplies?” Ezra demanded. “They just made us leave them in that corridor, but we paid a lot of money for them –”

“Forget the supplies,” Kanan said, hustling them towards the exit. Despite the maze of twisting corridors that made up the interior of the asteroid, Hera was positive that they could find their way back to the _Ghost_ without an escort; Kanan’s sense of direction would make certain of that.

“But –”

“We can get supplies anywhere,” Hera said.

“But we already paid for them!”

“They’re not worth sticking around for,” Kanan said. “Especially since I’m pretty sure the Empire’s already on its way.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to Kablob for stepping in as beta.
> 
> The clearinghouse and Aral tukor Viest originally appear in _Star Wars: Empire and Rebellion: Razor's Edge_ by Martha Wells, which is one of my favorite Star Wars novels, Legends or canon, and which I highly recommend.
> 
> For new readers, I do daily progress reports over on Tumblr, under the tag "[daily fic snippet](http://bedlamsbard.tumblr.com/tagged/daily-fic-snippet)," if you want to keep track of what I'm working on or get a hint of what's happening in the next chapter or two. Backbone has been on an unofficial hiatus for the past month or so, due to personal reasons, but as it's my birthday and I always like to post fic on my birthday, that's briefly on hold for this chapter.


	23. Fulcrum

Cham woke with a start, confused in the close dark of his stateroom, not certain where he was or what he was doing there. It was only the faint rattling of the ship’s life support systems that finally told him that he was on the _Forlorn Hope_.

Sometime in the night Alecto had rolled over against him, her breathing steady and her cheek against his chest. Cham raised a hand to touch her lekku, then thought better of it, not wanting to disturb her. They hadn’t shared a bed in years; they might not again. He wanted to stay in this moment as long as he could. He let his head fall back against the pillows, listening to the sound of her breathing, the warm weight of her body against him.

It took him a moment to realize that something had woken him up.

He didn’t know where his comlink was, but he could hear the hardwired communications station in the other room beeping insistently with an incoming transmission. He shut his eyes for a moment, willing it to shut itself off; when it didn’t he gently untangled himself from Alecto, who made a groan of discontent, but didn’t wake. Cham slid out of bed and padded barefoot across the room, thrusting back the curtain that separated it from his office.

If the ship had been under attack, the alarms would have been going off, and they were silent now. That was something of a relief, but that didn’t change the fact that it was the middle of the night cycle. If everything had been well, then no one would have been comming him.

Since it _was_ the middle of the night, Cham turned the lights on to fifty percent instead of all the way up, resting his hands on the edge of his desk as he activated the holocomm.

Neso Cseh Syndulla’s image sprang into view. He looked as tired as Cham felt, with dark bags under his eyes and his lekku drooping, the collar of his shirt open. _“I’m sorry to wake you, Uncle,”_ he said.

“It’s all right, Neso,” Cham said, keeping his voice low so as not to wake Alecto. “What is it?”

_“There’s been another bounced transmission. We’re trying to trace the original ship now.”_

Cham blinked, suddenly awake. “Did you intercept the message?”

_“Yes, but we haven’t been able to decipher it yet. It’s using a different decryption than the previous one.”_

“Blast,” Cham muttered, rubbing a hand over his face. “Did it go through?”

Neso nodded, his expression grim. _“We almost didn’t catch it all, except that I’d had an idea and was going through all the fleet transmissions from the past week when it pinged off the_ Errant Venture _. It was sent from the_ Mercy Kill _this time, but there are only about four ships in the fleet with the comm range to reach any distance. Most of the external transmissions originating from the fleet have to transmit through one of those four anyway.”_

He turned his head as soon as someone outside of the holoprojector’s transmitter range said something to him, the words only a blurred murmur to Cham’s ears, then looked back at Cham.

“What is it?”

_“We were the original ship, General Syndulla,”_ Neso said, clearly picking each word with deliberate care. _“The origin point for that transmission was the_ Forlorn Hope _.”_

Cham stared at him, sick to his stomach. “You are certain?”

_“Yes, Uncle,”_ Neso said, sounding almost as sick as Cham felt. _“We’re trying to narrow it down to a specific communications terminal, but that might be impossible.”_ He hesitated, then added, _“Uncle, could it really be one of us? I don’t want to believe that anyone on the_ Hope _would ever betray the fleet this way –”_

“I don’t know, Neso.” Cham tightened his hands on the edge of his desk, his mind ticking through every individual he knew on the _Forlorn Hope_ , considering and rejecting possibilities. “How many people know about this? Have you told Lysha or Mishaan yet?”

Neso shook his head. _“Elpis and I are the only ones down here – Uncle, what should we do?”_

Cham rubbed at his forehead again. “Do you – never mind that. I want you and your team to work on it, but carefully, Neso. This cannot get out; there will be panic.”

This time Neso nodded slowly. _“Even Lysha and Captain Secura?”_

Cham hesitated. “Even Lysha and Captain Secura,” he said finally. “If you think that you must, ask me first.”

_“Do you really believe that it’s one of them?”_ Neso sounded shocked, for which Cham couldn’t blame him.

“No, of course I don’t,” Cham said. “But I would rather keep this circle as small as possible for as long as possible. Both of them will understand when the time comes.”

Neso nodded slowly, his expression strained. _“Yes, Uncle. I understand. I’ll keep it to my team – that’s only four other people. I’ll brief them as soon as possible.”_

“Let me know what you discover,” Cham told him, and Neso nodded again.

_“There’s one other thing, Uncle. I don’t know if you’ve checked the latest bounty sheets, but –”_

“I’ve been sleeping,” Cham said, a little tartly.

_“I’m sorry. But you should check them now.”_

Neso’s image vanished before Cham could ask him why, leaving Cham blinking at the place where the hologram had been. He leaned his hands against the side of the desk and let his head drop, his lekku drooping forward over his shoulders.

“Did I hear that right?”

He looked up to see Alecto standing in the entrance to his bedroom, holding the curtain aside with one hand. She had a blanket wrapped around her shoulders, and in the room’s dim light she looked soft and vulnerable, like the girl that Cham had met in her small village all those years ago.

Of course, that girl had been as tough as nails, so appearances were deceiving.

“That depends,” Cham said, straightening upright. “What did you hear?”

“That there’s an Imperial spy on the _Hope_.” Alecto let the curtain fall and came over to settle down on the couch, folding her legs to one side. She raised her gaze to him as Cham turned to face her, leaning back against his desk. “How long have you known?”

“Neso discovered that someone in the fleet had given our coordinates to the Empire only a few days ago,” Cham said. “That is how they knew how to find us before the battle. That was no coincidence.” He scowled. “That was why they brought Hera. Now it seems that that spy is on the _Hope_ – perhaps has been all along.”

“Perhaps?” Alecto’s brow knit, then she said slowly, “You think it’s one of the Amersus we rescued from the _Coba_.”

Cham sighed and went over to sit down beside her. “I would like it to be one of the Amersus,” he said. “I would prefer that to a Syndulla, though obviously neither is preferable.”

“Obviously.” Alecto pinched the bridge of her nose between her fingers. “If this gets out –”

“It won’t – not until I have a name and a body to give to the Synedrion,” Cham said. He felt his mouth twist as he added, “Living or dead.”

“I know which one I would prefer,” Alecto muttered. She leaned forward to pick up a small holoprojector from the clutter on the coffee table, fiddling with it for a few seconds before it turned on. “What was Neso talking about with the bou –”

She dropped the holoprojector with a gasp. It settled on the table without turning off, still displaying the most recently posted Imperial bounties in a revolving column of holoposters. _Wanted for Crimes Against the Empire_ – Cham had seen a lot of those before. His gaze skated over images of humans, a Lasat, even an astromech droid, then settled on the one at the top.

_Hera Syndulla._

Alecto grabbed for his hand, her fingers digging in tightly enough to hurt. “She did it,” she breathed. “Hera did it.”

*

As it turned out, they couldn’t leave the clearinghouse immediately, no matter how much Hera wanted to. They needed those supplies, and after the arguments that she and Kanan had put towards Viest to let them stay, it would look odd if they departed the clearinghouse without half of what they had come for. At least they didn’t have to pay for the fuel twice, but the supplies were long gone – probably stolen by the dock scavengers that Hera had seen lurking around the darker corridors of the clearinghouse.

“At least actually bargain this time,” Ezra said as they made their way to the docking bay where one of the other traders in the clearinghouse was set up; it probably wasn’t a smart idea to go back to the first one, even if he hadn’t met Kanan and Hera already.

“Bargaining isn’t really Zeb’s or Sabine’s strong suit,” Kanan pointed out, sounding amused. They had left the two of them back on the _Ghost_ to keep an eye on the ship, though they had brought Chopper with them this time.

Ezra snorted. “You think?”

“We’re going to have to bargain,” Hera said, only half her mind on the conversation. “We don’t exactly have an unlimited purse.”

She was just glad that she had gotten into habit of keeping hard credits other than pocket money on the _Ghost_ , which hadn’t even occurred to her when she had first been in the field. During that first year, when she and Kanan had still been feeling each other out, Agent Beneke had cut off her access to ISB funds to see how she would react. Hera had spent most of her four years at the Academy convinced that the Empire would lose interest at her at any moment and throw her out, so at the time it had felt like a confirmation of every fear she had ever had. As a result, she kept a stockpile of credits on the _Ghost_ , added to whenever she withdrew money from the ISB’s slush accounts and padded out by her savings.

Over the past six years it had grown to a not-inconsiderable amount, but it wouldn’t last a crew of five – six if you counted Chopper – more than a month, if that. They had already put a substantial dent in it today. Hera just hoped that paying for a second load of supplies wouldn’t cost them too much.

It only took them a few minutes with the first trader on Hera’s mental list to realize that that might not be the problem.

“Sold?” she demanded of the trader, a tired-looking Sullustan with an eyepatch. “What do you mean they’ve been sold? They’re right there!”

“Waiting for pick-up,” the Sullustan told her. “Sorry, lady, but I’m sold out for the rotation. As soon as these get picked up I’m out of here. Try Bariq in Bay Sixty-Three.”

Hera and Kanan looked at each other, while Ezra crossed his arms and glared mutinously at the trader, apparently doubting his veracity. “All right,” Kanan said finally. “Come on.”

It took them more than two hours to find Bariq, since one of the connecting corridors had collapsed and he turned out to be in Bay 36, not 63. By then, he was sold out too, and they were on what felt like the opposite side of the asteroid from the _Ghost_. The next three traders they tried made excuses too, even though Hera could see crates of food and other goods stacked up in the holds of their ships – all, apparently, reserved for other buyers.

As they stepped out of the bay where the fifth trader was docked, passing another crew going inside as they did so, Kanan looked at Hera and said, “You thinking what I’m thinking?”

“I think we’re being set up,” Hera said, scowling. “I think Viest passed the word that she doesn’t actually want us to leave until whoever she called gets here.”

“Yeah,” Kanan said. “That’s what I was thinking. We’d better get back to the others.”

_Hopefully it doesn’t take another five hours_ , Hera thought, checking the chrono on her comlink. They had been at the clearinghouse far longer than she had originally planned, even before what had happened with Viest.

“But what about the supplies?” Ezra said with single-minded focus.

“We’ll have to get them somewhere else, because we’re not going to be able to get them here,” Hera said. “We’re good for another few days, at least, even with the amount Zeb eats. I’d rather get out of here now with our skins intact than spend another half-day chasing after something that no one will sell us and get caught by whoever Viest sold us out to.”

Ezra considered this solemnly, then finally nodded. He still looked a little reluctant; Hera assumed that he didn’t like the idea of having to weigh going hungry against whatever unknown fate was waiting for them, but there wasn’t any other way.

Kanan pulled his comlink off his belt. “Spectre One to _Ghost_ – we’re headed back, be ready to leave as soon as we arrive.”

_“You get the supplies?”_ Zeb asked, his voice slightly distorted; the asteroid mine was playing haywire with communications, another thing that Hera didn’t like about this place. One of many.

“No, but I’m pretty sure that we’re not going to. We’ll try somewhere else.”

_“Because of –”_

“Trust me, I’m pretty sure it doesn’t have anything to do with you,” Kanan said. “Just be ready to leave. Spectre One out.” He replaced his comlink on his belt as they continued walking in the direction of the _Ghost_ ’s docking bay – hopefully without all the stops and roundabouts it wouldn’t take them as long to get there as it had to get here.

“The flightmaster isn’t actually going to bring the Empire _here_ , is she?” Ezra asked, frowning. “That would be pretty stupid.”

“It would be,” Hera agreed. She hadn’t gotten the impression that Viest was stupid; no one would be able to keep hold of the rancor nest of a shadow port without being both smart and vicious. Both worried Hera; Viest might well think that she was smart and vicious enough to control the Empire’s ingress into her own territory. Hera had seen that before.

She wasn’t certain whether she was more concerned about the possibility of the Empire coming after them or of Free Ryloth doing the same. Maybe in the wake of the battle that had been fought recently her father wouldn’t be able to spare the ships or the people to come all the way out here, though Hera had to admit that the idea that the fleet had been so badly hurt dragged at her heart.

She didn’t know whether to think of them as her people or not. Hera had spent years doing her damnedest to distinguish herself from her father and his organization, from Ryloth, from other Twi’leks, and she had thought that it had worked. Her home had been the Empire, her family the ISB – and then, later, her home had been the _Ghost_ , Kanan her family. Not Ryloth, not the Syndulla clan. The Free Ryloth fleet hadn’t yet existed when she had left Ryloth for the colony at Zardossa Stix; Hera shouldn’t have cared.

Except Xiaan was there. Doriah was there, and Ojeda, and her mother – and her father. And maybe other members of her family, even her friends from Ryloth or the colony.

_But my people?_ Hera asked herself. _Are they my people?_

She didn’t have the Empire or the ISB anymore. All she had was her ship and her crew. If anything happened to them –

She didn’t even have her duty to bury herself in anymore, not the way she had when Kanan had been taken the first time. If anything happened to them, she would be all alone. She would have nothing.

They had been walking for about fifteen minutes when her comlink and Kanan’s sounded in unison. They shared a look as Hera took her comlink off her belt, Kanan leaning close to listen.

_“Spectre One, Spectre Two, we’ve got a problem,”_ Sabine said. _“Three TIE fighters just came out of hyperspace. I’m pretty sure they’re here for us.”_

Hera stared at her comlink, stunned. “TIEs?” she said. “Already? I thought there were no Imperial ships in this area –”

Imperial cruisers and star destroyers were fast, but not that fast, and regular TIEs weren’t equipped with hyperdrives. It should have taken at least half a rotation for anyone to reach the clearinghouse from the nearest Imperial base, more than enough time to conclude their business and depart by the timeline Viest had given them. Only –

“They’re not here for us,” Kanan said, his shoulders slumping in resignation. “They’re here for me.”

_“No offense,”_ Sabine said, _“but I’m pretty sure those warrants are out on all of us. I’ve seen them. They’re pretty thorough, except for the ‘deserter’ part. They left that out for some reason.”_

Kanan’s eyes narrowed to slits, but instead of responding, he looked at Ezra. “Do you sense them?”

Ezra gave him a baffled look. “Sense who?”

Kanan just raised an eyebrow.

_“Is now really the best time to train Ezra?”_ Zeb growled. Hera couldn’t really disagree, but she held her tongue, curious to see what Kanan intended.

“Reach out with your senses,” he told Ezra. “You’ll know it when you feel it.”

This time Ezra gave him a sideways glance, frowning, before he shut his eyes and stretched out a hand in the direction of the nearest hangar bay. As Chopper warbled a query, Hera saw a line form between Ezra’s brows. “There’s something,” he said slowly. “No – someone. Some _ones_. They feel…I’ve felt –” His eyes snapped open. “They’re the same Inquisitors you fought on Mustafar!”

Kanan nodded and clasped Ezra’s shoulder briefly. “Good job, kid.” He raised his gaze to Hera. “What do you want to bet there’s a cruiser coming after them?”

“No bet,” Hera said. “Looks like our time’s up.” She caught her lower lip briefly between her teeth, cataloging their options. Even if they had clearance to land – and she thought that the only way that the TIEs could have gotten here so quickly was if Viest had contacted them, which diminished the chances that they would get into a firefight on their way into the clearinghouse – most of the ships docked here would panic at the idea of an Imperial incursion. This was the type of place people came to get away from the Empire. That would slow them down.

She said as much to Kanan, who nodded. “I’ve got an idea,” he said, “but you’re not going to like it.”

“Oh, I’m not the one who’s going to be hammering the dents out of the _Ghost_ if they run into the walls,” Hera said.

_“What?”_ Zeb and Sabine demanded in near-unison.

Hera raised her comlink again. “Bring the _Ghost_ out of dock and swing around to this side of the asteroid. It will be faster than trying to find our way back through the docking corridor.” Shouts of alarm were already beginning to emanate from nearby docking bays and branching corridors, beings running in the direction of their ships and forcing their small group to press themselves back against the nearest walls; Hera assumed that news of the TIEs’ arrival was already beginning to spread. Having been in spaceports before when the Empire had descended, Hera knew that the situation would only get more chaotic, even if at the moment there were only three Inquisitors without stormtroopers to back them up. “We’ll find an empty docking bay so you can land and pick us up.”

There was a long moment of silence, and then Sabine said hesitantly, _“Hera, neither of us has ever flown the_ Ghost _. I’ve flown the_ Phantom _, TIE fighters, shuttles, but –”_

“It’s the same principle,” Hera told her. “Just a little bigger. You and Zeb are both good pilots, you’ll do fine. Spectre Two out.” She lowered her comlink before either of them could protest further. “Come on,” she told Kanan and Ezra. “Let’s go find somewhere for them to land.”

*

_Blast!_ Ahsoka thought, shoving her way past the group of Rodians running in the opposite direction. _I thought I’d have more time!_

She had landed on a station in chaos, coming out of hyperspace just minutes after the Inquisitors had arrived. Hondo hadn’t answered her hails; Ahsoka didn’t know whether that was a good sign or if he had fled at the first sign of Imperial might. That would have been the smartest thing to do – or at least the one most likely to result in preserving his own skin, which was what Hondo Ohnaka had always been good at. Ahsoka had docked the _Aegis_ in the first empty bay she had found, wanting to find Caleb Dume before the Inquisitors did. What they were doing here she didn’t know, but she was willing to bet that it wasn’t good.

She had followed a thread of the Force through the asteroid’s docking corridor, hoping that it was leading her to Caleb Dume and not to some other Force-user. Not counting the Inquisition, the number of trained Force-users in the galaxy right now could probably be counted on the fingers of one hand; Ahsoka wasn’t willing to bet that there was another one on the station right now.

Beings were running in all directions, emerging from corridors leading deeper into the asteroid and headed towards the bays where their ships were docked or the chambers where their cargos were stored. The Empire didn’t bother sending Inquisitors for something as minor as wiping out a shadow port, no matter what kind of scum and villainy it harbored, but Ahsoka suspected that the scum and villainy in question didn’t know that. Most of the asteroid’s inhabitants had to be thinking that the three TIEs were only an advance guard, with a couple of star destroyers en route to do the real dirty work. Ahsoka was willing to bet that there was at least a cruiser following them, but doubted that they were all that interested in the clearinghouse. Not if the Inquisition was involved.

A flicker in the Force caught her attention and Ahsoka followed it, ducking around a huge Trandoshan shoving a pair of crates on repulsors along in front of him. The floating lumas in the passage gleamed briefly off dully-burnished green armor that Ahsoka didn’t recognize and illuminated a pair of green lekku decorated with curving white patterns.

_Syndulla_ , she thought. The space between them in the corridor emptied as the crew of Aqualish and Sullustans between them vanished into the nearest docking bay, and Ahsoka got a clear view of the three beings and the orange-painted astromech droid in front of her. She lunged after them –

– and swayed back out of the way, her lightsaber leaping into her hand as Caleb Dume whirled, his lightsaber igniting in a streak of blue plasma that Ahsoka met with her own blade.

The blades burned between them, blue sparking against white. Hera Syndulla raised her blaster, while the human boy with them simply burst out, “You!”

“Fulcrum,” Dume said, his voice even.

“Hound,” Ahsoka returned. “I take it your circumstances have changed since the last time we met?”

He eyed her for a long moment, then deactivated his lightsaber. “You could say that. What do you want?”

“To talk.” Ahsoka deactivated her own lightsaber, eyeing them curiously. This was the first time she had ever seen Hera Syndulla in person, a tall green-skinned Twi’lek woman whose grip on her blaster didn’t waver. The family resemblance was striking.

“We’re a little busy right now.” Unlike the previous time they had met, he was using the same Outer Rim accent that he had in the Crucible surveillance vids Ahsoka had seen, his voice a little lighter than she had expected.

“Kanan, they’re coming,” the boy whispered. “I can feel them.”

Ahsoka shot a surprised look at him, realizing belatedly that he was the same boy she had met on Lothal. _That was why_ – She had felt something then, a disturbance in the Force, but at the time hadn’t had the opportunity to follow up on it. The Inquisitor clearly had.

Dume’s gaze flickered from her to the boy, then to Syndulla. She turned her head to look at him, something passing silently between them before she said, “You can’t be serious.”

“They’ll go after us and not you or the _Ghost_ ,” Dume said. “We’ll rendezvous with you later once we’re clear.”

“Are you out of your mind? She’s a rebel terrorist –”

Dume raised an eyebrow, turning to look at Ahsoka. “She’s a Jedi,” he said. “It’ll be fine, I promise.” He leaned in and kissed her quickly. “Get Zeb and Sabine out of here before that cruiser arrives. We’ll be fine.”

“I am _not_ leaving you again!”

“Hey,” Dume said softly. “I always come back.” Whatever he had been going to say next was lost as a group of roughly-clad humans raced past, forcing them to press back against the wall. When they had gone, Dume added, “The Inquisitors will follow us. Not you. Get Zeb and Sabine out of here and we’ll lure them away.”

“You just met this woman,” Syndulla hissed at him. “You don’t know anything about her.”

“I know everything I need to –”

Ahsoka saw the probe droid at the same time he did, igniting her lightsaber as it sprayed laser bolts at them. She and Dume parried back the bolts while Syndulla sighted down the barrel of her blaster, then pulled the trigger. The blast sent the droid reeling back against the wall in a shower of sparks before it fell.

“They’re on their way,” Dume said, deactivating his lightsaber. He caught Syndulla’s shoulders in his hands, saying, “We’ll be fine. You and Chopper go.”

“Wait,” said the boy. “What about –”

“You’re with us,” Dume said. “It’s not me they’re tracking.”

Syndulla hissed between her teeth, then snapped, “If I have to come pull you out of the Crucible again, I’ll kill you myself.” She caught a hand around the back of Dume’s head and pulled him down for a hard kiss, then, breathless, added, “Take care of Ezra,” before turning to run in the opposite direction. The astromech rolled after her, emitting furious-sounding shrieking noises.

“What do you mean, it’s not you they’re tracking?” the boy – Ezra – demanded. “Aren’t they here for you?”

“Neither Patience nor the Hangman have ever been able to track me in the Force,” Dume said. “And I’m guessing they wouldn’t have any more luck with you,” he added to Ahsoka. “Which leaves one option. You have a ship?”

“This way,” Ahsoka said, turning back in the direction she had just come.

They ran down the corridor, shoving their way through groups of pirates and smugglers trying to get to their ships. Ahsoka thought they were about two-thirds of the way there when Ezra glanced behind them and let out an incoherent yell, shoving Kanan to one side. Ahsoka dove in the opposite direction as a double-bladed red lightsaber sliced through the suddenly empty space between them. There was a shout of pain from someone else in the corridor; Ahsoka ignored it, ducking again as the lightsaber went flying back to its bearer. When she rose to her feet, pulling both her lightsabers off her belt, it was to see a slim woman in black armor and a concealing helmet standing at the opposite end of the corridor, a pair of probe droids hovering at either shoulder. Another being, a male of some species Ahsoka didn’t recognize, was standing beside her, and just behind them was another dark-clad figure that made her breath catch with sudden recognition.

So Barriss Offee was alive, after all.

Dume was back on his feet too, his unlit lightsaber in his fist. Ezra scrambled up behind him, his right hand going to the energy slingshot on his left wrist. Ahsoka could feel his fear vibrating through the Force, while Dume was almost utterly inscrutable, tense with anticipation.

_He’s an Inquisitor_ , she thought. _Of course he wants the fight –_

Then he glanced upwards, stretching a hand out and bringing it sharply down – and with it, the roof of the corridor between them and the three Inquisitors. Amidst the chaos of tumbled rock and choking dust, Ahsoka didn’t hesitate, grabbing Ezra’s shoulder and shoving him in front of her. Dume brought up the rear as they ran, glancing behind himself.

QT-KT already had the _Aegis_ ’s ramp down when they burst into the docking bay, standing at the top of it with her sensor dish up. She let out a relieved series of beeps at the sight of Ahsoka, rolling back to close up the ramp as soon as they were inside the ship. Ahsoka dashed through the narrow corridor for the cockpit, relieved that she had left the ship on standby. Dume dropped into the co-pilot’s chair beside her as she slid into the pilot’s seat, bringing the boards from standby to full-power. Ezra caught at the back of Dume’s chair for balance as Ahsoka took the _Aegis_ smoothly up off the deck and out through the magnetic shield, joining the other ships currently fleeing the clearinghouse.

“Qutee, calculate the jump to hyperspace –”

Dume pulled his comlink off his belt. “Spectre One to _Ghost_ , we’re clear,” he said. “Get out of here; I’ll send you the coordinates for a rendezvous as soon as I’ve got them.”

_“Copy, Spectre One,”_ Hera Syndulla replied crisply. _“Ghost out.”_

“Say hello, hyperspace,” Ahsoka said, pulling down the lever as soon as they were clear of the asteroid’s small gravitational field. Stars streaked into lines in the viewport, then into the strange blue lights of hyperspace.

Almost at the same instant, she and Dume were on their feet, lightsabers ignited and at each other’s throats.

*

The three Inquisitors burst into the docking bay just as the little hunter-killer slipped out through the magnetic shield into open space, leaving behind a wash of heat from its engines. A moment later it vanished as it jumped to hyperspace.

The First Inquisitor deactivated her lightsaber, though her companions kept theirs ignited.

“Another Jedi?” said the Hangman. “We did not know that the Hound had such powerful allies. Or that any other Jedi still lived.”

Patience gave him a slightly pitying look as she deactivated her lightsaber and returned it to her belt. She raised a hand to let one of her parrot droids climb down her arm to perch on her wrist; it chirped at her and she stroked a finger down its chassis. “Jedi?” she said. “Not a Jedi. You would know that if you ever paid any attention to the reports.”

She smiled, radiating satisfaction, and chucked her droid beneath what passed for a chin. “Our master will be pleased to learn of this.”

The Hangman turned on her, scowling. “Our master wanted the Hunter’s Hound in a cage, and instead the traitor has fled again –”

“But now we know –”

The First left them to their bickering and crossed the docking bay to stand at the very edge of the magnetic shield and look out into space. Starships were fleeing the clearinghouse like startled rycrits, emerging from dozens of docking bays and jumping to hyperspace in streaks of light. One of them must have been the _Ghost_ , though the First wasn’t certain which. They should have gone after the ship rather than wasting time finding a way around the rockfall Dume had caused; if his friends had come for him, then he, she was certain, would have come for his friends. And Ahsoka Tano would not let him out of her sight now.

Of course, the foolish children whom the First was saddled with would never have countenanced such a thing, not once they had realized that they had within their reach not only a renegade Inquisitor but a second Jedi and a Force-sensitive child as well. Any of those three would have made their master a satisfactory prize, if not quite consolation for the havoc that had been wreaked at the Crucible. All of them – well, that would certainly have made up for it. Especially _that_ Jedi.

Former Jedi, rather.

She was still looking at the stars when Admiral Konstantine’s star destroyer came out of hyperspace, easily dwarfing the starships remaining in the system. They immediately veered away from the massive warship, choosing discretion as the better part of valor and jumping to hyperspace to leave the clearinghouse undefended. So much for whatever loyalty they had to the flightmaster, then.

She raised her comlink as it beeped. “Agent Kallus,” she said. “So good of you to finally join us. It’s a pity that you and Admiral Konstantine didn’t arrive a little earlier.”

_“The traitors escaped?”_ Kallus demanded.

“No thanks to your late arrival.” That was ungracious of her, since the star destroyer had come at full speed as soon as they had intercepted the flightmaster’s transmission to her local Imperial contact, but she was feeling ungracious. Neither Kallus nor Konstantine had been particularly forthcoming, which was why she hated these joint assignments. No branch of the service trusted any of the other branches, but the Inquisition and the ISB both took that to new levels.

_“We arrived with all possible speed,”_ Kallus informed her coolly. _“Do you require aid securing this…establishment?”_

“The Imperial Inquisition hardly needs to concern itself with rabble,” she said. She turned as the doors to the hangar slid open, admitting a tall, dark-haired human woman accompanied by half a dozen thugs of various species. She checked for a moment at the sight of three Inquisitors; presumably that hadn’t been who she had been expecting when she had contacted the sector authorities.

_“We’ve also had a rather urgent message from the commander of the Imperial forces in this sector,”_ Kallus added, sounding mildly disgusted and confirming her suspicions. _“Apparently this establishment is key to his continuing operations in the area.”_

“Unsurprising.” Whoever it was probably got a healthy cut from the clearinghouse in exchange for leaving it alone. That kind of corruption was common in the Empire, even though she thought that it weakened them in the long term. The Empire should have been above such things. “You can assure him that we’ll leave it intact, even if they failed to deliver what they promised.”

She disconnected the transmission before he had a chance to respond and looked back at the others; she supposed she ought to go take care of this before one of the other Inquisitors lost their temper and killed someone.

*

_Oh, yes, it’s her_ , Kanan thought. He had been pretty sure back in the docking corridor, but the light was better here, enough so that he could see the Togruta woman’s facial markings clearly. They had grown and shifted a little with age, but they were still unmistakably the same ones they had been sixteen years ago, the last time he had seen Ahsoka Tano. A lot of other things had changed since then.

“Uh,” Ezra said, frozen and staring between them. “I thought we were all on the same side.”

“That depends,” Ahsoka said. Her lightsaber blade didn’t waver, its white plasma picking out the dull gleam of her headband and the illuminated lights on her armor. It was close enough to Kanan’s neck that he could feel heat radiating from it. If she was bothered by his lightsaber at her throat, she didn’t show it. “Whose side are you on, Caleb?”

“Hera’s.” He looked at her for another long moment, the space stretching out between them, then deactivated his lightsaber, flipping it around in his hand before he returned it to his belt. “And it’s Kanan, not Caleb.”

It made the hair rise on the back of his neck not to have a weapon in his hand when he still had one pointed at his face, but this wasn’t the Crucible and Ahsoka Tano wasn’t an Inquisitor. Playing tough wouldn’t get him anywhere. Kanan hoped.

He had a heartbeat of concern that it wouldn’t work, then Ahsoka deactivated her own lightsaber. Unlike him, she kept hold of the weapon. “Not the Hound?”

Kanan barely resisted the urge to bare his teeth, feeling Ezra shift uneasily at his side; the boy must have heard the nickname somewhere. Kanan put a hand on his shoulder and squeezed encouragingly, since the kid had probably been through more in the past few days than in the previous fifteen years of his life put together. “No,” he told Ahsoka, “not the Hound. Not anymore.”

“Why should I believe you?”

“You really think our friends back there were after me because they wanted to make sure I got the company bonus for the year?” He grinned without humor. “Consider my resignation tendered.”

Ahsoka stared at him, her expression hard. Kanan resisted the urge to reach for his lightsaber again, forcing himself not to tighten his grip on Ezra’s shoulder. The boy flicked a glance at him, his gaze narrowing in speculation before he looked back at Ahsoka. “You were on Lothal on Empire Day,” he said slowly. “With all those Twi’leks. But I don’t know who you are.”

“Ahsoka,” she said, finally returning her lightsaber to its hook on her armor. She gave him a small smile. “My name is Ahsoka Tano.”

“Mine’s Ezra. Ezra Bridger.” He snuck a glance at Kanan, who sighed and released him. He was pretty sure that he had been holding onto him more for his own comfort than for any attempt to keep Ezra out of trouble, at least after the first few minutes. “He’s Kanan. But you knew that already?”

Ahsoka dipped her chin in a nod. “I’ve been looking for you,” she said to Kanan, and then to Ezra, “I didn’t expect to find you with him.”

Ezra shrugged. Kanan said, “I’m a popular guy.”

“Yes,” Ahsoka said dryly. “I’d certainly gotten that impression from your friends back there. I wasn’t expecting to find Inquisitors hunting one of their own.”

Kanan snorted. “Then you don’t know much about Inquisitors. Who else are they going to send?”

“I’ve never had to think about it before.” Ahsoka considered him a moment longer, then said, “I set the navicomputer for a system with, ah, no inhabited planets. Once we’re out of hyperspace you can send a transmission to your crew. Until then –”

“I guess we’re stuck together,” Kanan said, giving her a tight smile. “Listen – we’re grateful for the assist, but I have to admit that the timing’s suspicious. I hadn’t figured Viest to be in tight with the Rebellion, given that she’s the one who called the Empire down on us.”

“Viest is the flightmaster?” At his nod, Ahsoka went on, “I was contacted by someone else. My source’s name isn’t important.”

“Maybe to you it isn’t,” Kanan said. He crossed his arms over his chest, even though it would make his lightsaber draw slower. “Your source know that you’ve got a price on your head too? Or is he just loyal to the cause?”

She gave him a long look in response, then abruptly reached down and took her lightsabers off her hips. As Kanan unfolded his arms, she held them up so that he could see before putting them down on the seat of the pilot’s chair. “I think we need to talk,” she said. “I’d rather do it somewhere more comfortable and with less chance of bloodshed.”

Kanan stared at her, then sighed and removed his lightsabers from his belt. He set them down on the co-pilot’s chair, then unholstered his blaster and dropped it next to them. Ezra twitched for a moment, clearly wondering if he was expected to do the same with his energy slingshot, but given that it probably wouldn’t have any effect on Ahsoka Kanan didn’t see why he should bother.

Ahsoka apparently thought the same, because she didn’t comment on it. Kanan and Ezra followed her out of the cockpit and down the ship’s narrow hallway to the lounge, which was mostly taken up by crates – Kanan hadn’t seen ships of this design before, but going by the other hunter-killers he had seen, there was a good chance it didn’t have much of a hold to speak of. Then they all stood and stared around at each other, waiting for someone to sit first.

Kanan’s fingers itched for his lightsaber – not so much because he wanted to fight, but because he could feel the lightness on his hip where it should have hung. Even on the _Ghost_ he was never without it; the only time in the past five years he hadn’t had it within arm’s reach he had been in manacles on his way to Mustafar.

_This weapon is your life_ , his teachers had told him back at the Jedi Temple, but at the Crucible the lack of it had meant death, and that was driven into Kanan as deeply as the other. Maybe more so. He hadn’t yet had his Gathering when he had become a padawan; Depa Billaba had been the one to take him to Ilum, alone and without the other two members of his cohort. When the Order had come down, he had only been a padawan for barely two standard months. He had spent five years as an Inquisitor.

Radiating discomfort, Ezra finally perched on the end of the round bench built into the bulkhead nearest the holotable. Kanan set his shoulder against the wall near him, folding his arms over his chest as he watched Ahsoka tuck her hands behind her back. Her posture was relaxed, but Kanan could feel the edge of her tension in the Force. She, he suspected, didn’t like being without her weapons either.

“Kanan, I need to know something,” she said finally, while Kanan and Ezra stared at her. “And I need you to tell me the truth.”

Kanan raised an eyebrow. “You think I’m going to lie?”

“You’re an Inquisitor.”

“You think I’m going to tell the truth?”

“You were a Jedi,” Ahsoka said, putting just enough emphasis on the second word that Ezra twitched, glancing up at Kanan.

This time Kanan raised both eyebrows, letting the silence stretch out between them until he finally said, “What’s your question?”

She met his gaze. “Are you still working for the Empire?”

“No.”

“Those Inquisitors back there didn’t convince you?” Ezra said, his eyebrows climbing. He looked at Kanan, clearly searching for some kind of cue for how to react.

Ahsoka’s gaze softened for an instant as she glanced at him, then she looked back at Kanan. “You understand why I have to ask.”

“Yeah,” Kanan said. “I understand.” He ran a hand over the back of his head and added, “I’m not exactly in the Emperor’s good graces right now – I wasn’t even before Hera and I deserted.”

“No?”

“He got arrested, we had to break him out,” Ezra contributed. He eyed Ahsoka for a moment before adding, like he expected it to be a coup de grace, “From the Crucible.”

He looked disappointed when Ahsoka didn’t seem as impressed as he had clearly been hoping for. She just said, “So that mess on Mustafar that’s been all over the Imperial wires these past few days – that was you?”

Kanan shrugged. “Haven’t been paying attention to the Imperial wires, but yeah, it was probably us. I can’t think who else it would be; the last of the really unstable ones got weeded out last year.”

“I see.” She ran a hand over her chin, her gaze fixed on him. Kanan resisted the urge to shift under it; she was strong in the Force the way that all the Jedi were, the way that Lord Vader was, the way that only a handful of other Inquisitors were, and he could feel the gentle pressure of her attention in a way that made him twitch. Someone less Force-sensitive probably wouldn’t be aware of it, or at least wouldn’t realize what it was.

He wondered if Ezra had noticed it yet.

Kanan rubbed the back of his head again, decided he didn’t like being the only one interrogated here, and said, “You know, you’re supposed to be dead. I’ve seen the unaccounted-for lists from Order 66 and you’re not on them.”

Ahsoka just frowned. “I’m resourceful.”

“Yeah,” Kanan said. “Well, so are we.”

*

As soon as Ahsoka left the lounge, ostensibly to check something with her droid in the cockpit, Ezra leaned in towards Kanan and said in what was obviously supposed to be a hissed whisper, “Who _is_ she? Why couldn’t we just go with Hera and the others?”

Kanan pushed himself off the wall and went to sit down on the opposite side of the holotable, trying to work some of the stiffness out from his shoulder muscles. He hadn’t realized until now that he had been holding himself prepared to fight, that old familiar tension he remembered from his time at the Crucible. “Those Inquisitors weren’t at the clearinghouse for the whole crew,” he said. “They were there for us. I knew that if we split up, they’d all come after us and the others would be able to get away.”

“No, I get that they’re after _you_ ,” Ezra said. “I just don’t know what I have to do with it. Aren’t you the one that they’re interested in?”

“Not exactly,” Kanan said. “I mean, yeah, they want me, but now they know who you are. They want you too.”

Ezra’s eyes widened in surprise. “Why?” he demanded. “I’m no one. Because I helped you?”

“Partially,” Kanan said. He rested his hands on the table and leaned forward. “One of the duties of the Inquisition is retrieval – looking for Force-sensitive beings throughout the galaxy and either destroying them or recruiting them. That’s what I was doing on Lothal when I met you, I was scouting the Imperial Academy there for Force-sensitive cadets. Cadets are good,” he added slowly. “Or at least certain factions think so. I don’t know any Inquisitors that have come out of the Academies; there’s a separate program for them. What we do isn’t always compatible with the way cadets are trained.”

Looking uncomfortable, Ezra said, “But what does that have to do with me?”

“You’re strong in the Force, Ezra, and the Empire knows that now. It means that you’re valuable to them. They want you, the same way they wanted me five years ago. And if they can’t have you, then they’ll settle for killing you.” Kanan let out his breath. “As far as the Empire is concerned, there are only two options: either you join them or be destroyed.”

Ezra twitched a little, nervously lacing his hands together. “But you’re not like that – you’re not like the others.”

“I’m more like them than you think,” Kanan said gently.

The door to the lounge slid open. Kanan jerked reflexively, his hand falling to the empty place at his hip where his lightsaber should have been.

Ahsoka acknowledged the motion with a flicker of her eyes, then she said, “Kanan, could we talk? In private.”

“Why?” Ezra demanded. “Anything you want to say to him you can say to me too.”

“It’s fine, Ezra,” Kanan said, pushing to his feet. “It’s a small ship, it’s not like we’re going far.”

Ezra subsided, crossing his arms over his chest and looking stubborn.

Kanan followed Ahsoka out of the lounge and into the narrow corridor, then into a small room that turned out to be her cabin. Under other circumstances Kanan might have made a crack about being in her bedroom, but now he just settled himself onto the meditation cushion as she perched on her bunk, crossing her ankles primly in front of her.

“How much of that did you hear?” Kanan asked, after the silence stretching out between them got to be too much even for his overstretched nerves.

“Enough,” Ahsoka said. “How much like those other Inquisitors are you?”

Kanan shut his eyes and let his head fall back for a few moments, trying to think of the best way to answer that particular question. He had asked himself that plenty of times. “I’m alive,” he said finally.

He could feel the pressure of Ahsoka’s attention on him. “I’ve seen surveillance vids from when you were at the Crucible,” she said finally.

Kanan’s eyes snapped open, his hands clenching so tightly on his thighs that he knew he would find bruises there later. “What? How?”

Her gaze was fixed on him, unblinking. “That’s not important.” She let him sweat for a moment before adding, “And what I’ve seen isn’t much. There’s no sound and it’s been heavily edited. I don’t know what was cut out.”

Kanan ran his hands over his face, feeling sick. He had a pretty good idea of how the footage from the Crucible made him look; he remembered his time there more vividly than he wanted to.

“There is something I want to know, before anything else,” Ahsoka said.

He raised his gaze to her. “What?”

“I know Inquisitors have to earn their nicknames,” she said. “How did you get yours?”

Kanan pressed his fingers to his forehead. “Oh.” Coming here had been a mistake; he should have taken his chances with the First.

Ahsoka waited for him to respond without speaking, her gaze boring into him. Kanan ran a hand over his face, trying to figure out what to say, but there was no good way to tell this story. He was also pretty sure there was no way to tell this story and come out the other side without Ahsoka wanting to kill him.

“How much do you know about the Inquisition?” he asked finally.

“More than I’d like,” Ahsoka said, her gaze fixed on him, “but not as much as I probably should.”

Kanan let out a shuddering breath. “Do you know what a Hunt is?”

“No.”

“Inquisitors aren’t the most stable bunch. They crack, they usually go on a rampage, kill everyone around them. When one of us – when one goes rogue, protocol is to pull everyone out of the field and send the entire Inquisition after them. More Inquisitors die on Hunts than anywhere else, even training. Overwhelming force is the only way to handle it most of the time, unless you’re a…a specialist, and even then they’d rather be safe than sorry. It’s about the only time the Empire thinks that way,” he added bitterly.

He plucked at the sleeve of his jumper, forcing himself to keep his voice as calm as possible. He had never even told Hera about this, but he wasn’t certain that she would have understood. She had never been a Jedi. “I’d been at the Crucible about five months when another Inquisitor went rogue – a full Inquisitor, I mean, the trainees were…trainees don’t go rogue. They just snap and get put down, and they’re right there anyway.” He swallowed. “This time they sent the trainees out with the rest of the Hunt. Any training is good training, right? And if they didn’t survive, well, they wouldn’t have cut it anyway.”

He scraped a nail over the inside of his left wrist, the sudden sharp pain managing to ground him for a moment, keep him here in the present and not in the past. Not back in the Crucible. “My ma – when I was recruited, it was because I was a Jedi. The H – the Inquisitor who trained me used to be one of us too, and he wanted –” He stumbled over the words, digging his nails into his wrist.

It took him a moment to get himself under control, aware of Ahsoka’s unwavering gaze on him the entire time. “Most Inquisitors aren’t as strong in the Force as a Jedi, and even those who are – you know how it is. They’re not raised in the Force. They don’t know it like we do, they aren’t…it’s not the same. He wanted…he wanted someone like him. Someone who could think like that, who understood the Force the way he did. That I wasn’t fully trained when the Order fell was a plus for him, I guess because – because I wouldn’t overthink it.” Other reasons too, but he didn’t want to think about that. He didn’t want to think about this, for that matter.

He pressed his nails against the inside of his wrist, concentrating on that and not the gentle pressure of Ahsoka’s mind on his. “The Hunter took me out on that Hunt because he knew I could track the Fisher – the Inquisitor who had gone rogue.” He shut his eyes, adding without opening them, “Most of the others couldn’t, because she was a Jedi too – had been a Jedi. She knew how to hide herself in the Living Force. The dark side is inimical to it; someone who’s only been trained as an Inquisitor can’t – can’t.”

“She was a Jedi?”

“Yeah.” He was aware of his breath coming so quickly that it was all he could hear; Ahsoka’s words barely penetrated it, but the question rang in the Force. “Yeah, she was a Jedi.”

There wasn’t really any such thing as a former Jedi. People could leave the Order, but being a Jedi went deeper than merely the trappings of the Order and the Code. Jedi were Jedi in their blood and bone, in the fabric of their souls, in the heart of the Force. Kanan had been taught – certain schools of thought among the Order had taught – that even Jedi who turned to the dark side, who embraced the Sith, were still Jedi in all the ways that mattered. He didn’t know if Ahsoka had come out of that tradition or not.

She was watching him with one hand fisted on her thigh, like she wished she was holding her lightsaber. “What did you do?”

Kanan dug his nails into the inside of his wrist so hard that his fingers spasmed, but he managed to keep his voice steady as he said, “She was a murderer who destroyed everyone in the village where the child she had been sent after lived, as well as the child and six other Inquisitors. She tried to kill me.”

“What did you do, Kanan?” Ahsoka asked again.

“I killed her,” Kanan said.

He pushed to his feet, closing his hands into fists to keep her from seeing how badly they were shaking. Ahsoka watched him with narrowed eyes, but didn’t make a move to follow him as he crossed the cabin to the door. He had his hand over the control panel when Ahsoka said, “You know the Hunter is dead.”

Kanan flinched. “I – I know,” he managed to say.

“I killed him.”

Kanan put a hand over his face, blinking at the sudden smell of blood and realizing he had broken the skin on his left wrist. “I guessed.”

He heard her stand up, her steps light on the deck as she came over to stand behind him. “Are you angry with me?”

He let his breath scrape out.

“I saw him with you in those surveillance vids,” Ahsoka said softly, her breath warm on the back of his neck. “You cared for him.”

Kanan stared at the blood on the inside of his wrist. “I don’t know.”

“He was your master, your teacher, your…partner. That doesn’t bother you even a little?”

“He wasn’t my partner!” Kanan snapped, whirling to find himself nearly nose to nose with Ahsoka.

She met his gaze, unblinking. “That’s not what I’ve heard.”

“You don’t know anything about me, him, or the Inquisition,” Kanan said through his teeth. He groped blindly for the control panel and slammed his fist into the release button, hearing the door slide open behind him. He stepped away from Ahsoka as quickly as he could, every muscle in his body so stiff that he felt like he would shatter.

“Kanan,” Ahsoka said when he was halfway down the corridor, not sure where he was going but knowing that he had to be away from her. “If he was still alive, would you be here now?”

Kanan shut his eyes. “I don’t know.”

*

Something in his Headhunter’s guts had gone _clunk_ the last time Doriah had fired up his engines, so he was on his back beneath his starfighter, hitting things with a hydrogrip and yelling questions at Xiaan, who was up in the cockpit keeping an eye on the ship’s computers, which should have been telling them what wasn’t functioning correctly but instead kept throwing error codes with no apparent explanation. Doriah was so frustrated that he was about ready to rip the entire engine out and install a new one, if there had been one to spare.

He had coaxed Xiaan out of their stateroom to help, since she was almost as good as an astromech droid at this sort of thing and it was clear that she was starting to reach the end of her tether with the ISB files. They were all arranged in some sort of system that probably made perfect sense to a human, but were virtually impossible for a Twi’lek to understand – or at least, a Twi’lek who wasn’t used to them; Hera probably would have gotten it fine – which meant that they had to be gone through one by one. Xiaan had been in tears of frustration when Doriah had come by the stateroom to shower and change clothes; it hadn’t been hard to convince her to take a break, especially in service of making sure that he didn’t spontaneously blow up the next time he was on patrol. The problem was that he just couldn’t find anything actually _wrong_.

“Maybe it’s just the computers,” Xiaan suggested, leaning down over the side of the Headhunter so that her lekku hung perpendicular to the deck.

Doriah tilted his head up enough to see her. “I swear I heard something.”

“Maybe something came loose during the battle?”

“I thought of that already, but I haven’t found anything yet.” He had had a couple of close scrapes, but he hadn’t thought any of them had done anything more than score his paint; he’d already buffed that out anyway. Not to mention he had already gone on patrol a couple of times since then and his starfighter had been fine.

He pointed this out to Xiaan, who sighed in agreement. She vanished back up into the cockpit, and Doriah returned to unscrewing the panels over his torpedo launchers. At least he had made sure that they were unloaded, so he wasn’t in danger of blowing up the entire hangar. Just in case, though, he had made sure that the Headhunter’s guns were pointed towards the hangar’s entrance instead of the other starfighters parked in the bay.

He and Xiaan weren’t the only people in here, since about half the starfighters on the _Hope_ were currently being worked over by pilots, mechanics, and astromech droids. Some of them weren’t even from the _Hope_ ; not everyone in the fleet had the mechanics or equipment to make repairs viable on their own ships, which meant that both the ships and the people were over here cluttering up the hangars. If they had to launch starfighters in a hurry, it would be a mess. Doriah was hoping that that wouldn’t be a problem, since the last thing the fleet needed right now was another Imperial attack. Of course, unless he could figure out what was wrong with his fighter it wouldn’t be _his_ problem, either.

He got the panels loose and set them aside, then stuck his handlight between his teeth so that he could see the colors of the wires; his dark vision turned everything into shades of gray, which wasn’t particularly helpful when it came to things designed by humans and their inferior eyesight.

“Anything, Xi?”

“Just the same – wait, do that again.”

Doriah tugged obediently on a wire that had felt loose when he had passed his fingers over it, then Xiaan said, “No – false alarm.”

“Because that would have been too easy,” Doriah muttered under his breath. He replaced the panel and pushed himself further beneath the Headhunter’s undercarriage. It wouldn’t have made sense for it to be the proton torpedo launcher anyway, since it wasn’t as though he had had that fired up when the Headhunter had started making worrying noises.

People had been coming and going from the hangar all day, so he didn’t realize immediately that anyone was headed towards them until he saw a pair of feet stop in front of the Headhunter.

“You’re Xiaan Syndulla, aren’t you?”

“Yes,” Xiaan said hesitantly.

Doriah swore silently and started to push his way out from beneath the Headhunter.

“I didn’t know you were a pilot.” The voice was male and unfamiliar, which didn’t rule out anyone from the _Forlorn Hope_ , but the words certainly did.

“I’m not,” Xiaan said, still shy.

“I am,” Doriah said, grabbing the side of the Headhunter to pull himself to his feet. Xiaan, still perched in the cockpit, gave him a look of vast relief.

The newcomer was a man about Doriah’s age with dark purple skin and patrician caste tattoos winding around his lekku. Doriah knew all the patricians on the _Forlorn Hope_ , but he didn’t know this man or recognize the clan markings.

The stranger nodded to him, his gaze flicking over Doriah’s face and lekku to take in the lack of caste tattoos and dismissing him in the same moment. To Xiaan, he said, “I’m Keto Amersu, head of Clan Amersu in the fleet.”

Xiaan gave Doriah a panicked look. “It’s nice to meet you?” she said, turning the pleasantry into a question. She was pressed against the opposite side of the Headhunter’s cockpit, her eyes huge and frightened.

“I’m Doriah Syndulla,” Doriah said, to get Keto’s attention off Xiaan. It didn’t work, since Keto just flicked another glance at him as acknowledgment.

_Patricians_ , Doriah thought, resisting the urge to roll his eyes. Out of the corner of his vision, he saw Zabo and his gunner, who had been working on their bomber, look over, straightening up and watching Keto with predatory intensity. Zabo might not give a damn about Doriah, but everyone on the _Hope_ would walk through hell for Cham Syndulla’s niece, let alone throw an uppity Amersu out of the hangar.

“There’s no easy way to say this, so I’ll just ask,” Keto said. “I heard Secchun Fenn made an offer for you, for her son Nawara. I wanted to ask if you would consider me instead.”

Xiaan’s jaw dropped. “What?”

“To marry,” Keto clarified. “I –”

“I’m not marrying _anyone_!” Xiaan snapped, her voice rising. She stood up in the cockpit, her hands clenched into fists at her sides.

Keto blinked, tilting his head back up to look at her. “I realize it’s sudden –”

“I’m not marrying Nawara Fenn and I’m not marrying you or anyone else,” Xiaan said flatly. “ _If_ I get married, I’ll marry inside the clan.” She took a deep breath, her shoulders tight. Her lekku were trembling, but Doriah thought that from where Keto was standing he wouldn’t be able to tell. “Just because I’m Cham Syndulla’s niece and a curiate doesn’t mean I’m a prize to be won or bartered for.”

“I asked –”

“And I’m not interested.” Xiaan swallowed, then looked back over her shoulder at Doriah. “I want to go now.”

Silently, he reached up to lift her down from the Headhunter. She clung to him, her face turned away and her hands fisted on his shoulders.

“You’re on a Syndulla ship, Amersu,” Zabo said, making Keto jump; he clearly hadn’t heard the other man’s approach. “If you want to stay on it, you should leave here now.”

Keto looked between the small group of pilots and mechanics who had gathered behind Zabo and Xiaan, who was hiding her face in Doriah’s shirt. “I see that,” he said. He dipped his head politely in Xiaan’s direction and added, “Please consider my offer,” before turning and walking away.

Doriah waited for the hangar doors to shut behind him before he bent his head to Xiaan and said, “He’s gone now.”

Xiaan put her arms up silently and looped them around his neck. “I should tell Uncle Cham,” she mumbled. “I bet the Amersu didn’t ask him first.”

“Are you all right?” Zabo asked, coming over to them.

Doriah felt Xiaan swallow, then she released him and turned around to face Zabo. “I am,” she said, her voice wavering slightly. “Thank you.”

“Any time,” Zabo said. He nodded awkwardly to Doriah, then turned away as the group of pilots and mechanics began to disperse back to the ships they had been working on.

“I should tell Uncle Cham,” Xiaan said again.

“Okay,” Doriah said, squeezing her hand. “We’ll go find him.”

*

“Ezra, can I ask you some questions?”

Ezra looked up to find Ahsoka standing over him, looking down at him with an expression of what seemed to be genuine concern. Given that whatever she had said to Kanan earlier had sent him storming through the lounge to go sit in the airlock – there wasn’t a whole lot of space to spare in the _Aegis_ – Ezra wasn’t certain that he wanted to hear anything that Ahsoka had to say, but there didn’t seem to be a good way to decline.

“Uh, sure,” he said, scooting over on the bench so that she could sit down beside him. “What do you want to know?”

“How long have you been with Kanan and his team?” She rested her elbows on the table and clasped her hands beneath her chin, looking at him so earnestly that Ezra felt a trickle of unreasonable unease. It was the kind of way the ladies at the Imperial-run shelters in Capital City looked at him. Ezra avoided the shelters as a matter of course – he had his tower and his hideouts – but he had on occasion been roped into them despite his best efforts.

“Uh – not that long,” Ezra had to admit. “Like a week, week and a half. It feels like longer,” he added, counting back in his head. It felt like a _lot_ longer.

“You weren’t with them before Empire Day?”

“No. I mean, I’d seen some of them around Capital City before, but they only got there a couple days earlier. Empire Day was the first time I ever saw Kanan.” He hesitated for a moment, wondering if he ought to tell her about being chased across the city, then decided that she would probably take that the wrong way. She seemed like the type, and – well, it wasn’t like there was a good way to say it. Besides, it was obvious that Kanan didn’t trust her, which meant that Ezra wasn’t going to either. “He recruited me the next day.”

“Recruited?” Ahsoka echoed. She sounded politely doubtful, and Ezra bristled in response before he even realized he was doing so.

“I had a choice,” he told her. “He asked and I said yes. No one forced me.”

A tiny line knit between Ahsoka’s brows. Slowly, she said, “When we met before, you didn’t strike me as someone who had any reason to love the Empire, but you can’t get much more Imperial than the ISB and the Inquisition. Did something change?”

Ezra kicked a foot idly under the table, chewing over both her question and his answer. Nothing had changed. Everything had changed. He finally compromised with a shrug and said, “It seemed like a good idea at the time.”

“Even after what happened to your parents?”

Ezra blinked. “To my – do you know what happened to my parents?”

“No, I’m sorry,” Ahsoka said quickly. “I was just thinking about the signs on your parents’ old house on Lothal – you said it was their house, didn’t you?”

“Oh,” Ezra said, deflating. “Yeah. That was my – their – home. But that was a long time ago.” He looked back at Ahsoka, trying to impress upon her the urgency of his words. “Kanan and Hera aren’t like other Imperials. They’re…nice. I mean, they’re not _nice_ ,” he added quickly, because in his experience “nice” meant certain things that were never good, “but they’re – they’re not like other Imperials. They’re not like anyone else I’ve met before, not them or Zeb or Sabine, or even Chopper. And not just because Kanan started talking about the Force or anything. And I know there was a lot going on – what with that ISB agent that Zeb hates and the battle and Hera’s parents and Kanan getting arrested and Mustafar and everything, but that doesn’t change anything. It just makes them more of who they are.” He frowned, then clarified, “And they’re not Imperials anymore.”

“I’d gotten that impression,” Ahsoka said. She was still frowning, considering him like she was trying to decide whether he was lying or just a stupid kid who didn’t know any better. “What happened?”

“Uh –” Ezra hesitated. “That’s not really my story to tell.”

Ahsoka’s brow knit again. “I have to admit that I’m surprised you agreed to train as an Inquisitor in the first place,” she said.

“I didn’t,” Ezra said, blinking at her. “That’s not why Kanan recruited me. He was pretty clear about that – that he didn’t want me to be an Inquisitor, I mean.”

“Then why did Kanan recruit you?”

Ezra shrugged. Even if she was a Jedi too, telling her everything Kanan had said about the Force didn’t seem right, and he definitely wasn’t going to tell her about the vision he and Kanan had shared when Kanan had been unconscious. “I guess you’d have to ask him that.”

Ahsoka inclined her head in acknowledgment. “I guess the more important question is why you agreed.”

Ezra was about to repeat what he had said earlier about it seeming like a good idea, but instead found himself saying, “It felt…right. You know? Like there was something out there bigger than me, and I had a chance to be a part of it. Even if it was the Empire, it was…it was the first time anyone had ever offered me that choice. No one’s asked me what I wanted since my parents – not for a long time, anyway.”

“You know that you have other choices now,” Ahsoka said, with an edge of concern that made the hair on the back of Ezra’s neck stand up. “You don’t have to stay with them. My associates and I can make sure that you have a new identity, credits, anything else –”

“No thanks,” Ezra said. “Listen, I had a choice, okay? More than one. I had a _lot_ of choices; no one tricked me into doing this. Hera and Kanan both offered to let me leave if I wanted – and they made me that offer too, with the new identity and the credits and a new planet, all that. I don’t want that. I want this – whatever it is. Even if it gets me killed.” _I want to be a Jedi_ , he almost added, but he managed to hold that in.

Maybe Ahsoka heard it anyway. “If Kanan told you –”

Footsteps on the deck heralded Kanan’s return, and Ahsoka stopped, frustration chasing briefly across her face. She looked up as Kanan appeared in the entrance to the lounge, bracing a hand on either side of the doorframe as he leaned into the room.

Ezra hadn’t gotten a good look at him when he had passed through earlier, and he was a little shocked now to see how tired and worn Kanan seemed, the fading bruises from Mustafar dark shadows on his face.

“We there yet?”

Ahsoka’s gaze narrowed for a moment, presumably calculating the amount of time they had spent in hyperspace. “Just about,” she said, rising.

Kanan and Ezra followed her back through the ship to the cockpit. Kanan carefully kept himself between her and Ezra the entire time, his hands loose at his sides. Ezra could see dried blood on the exposed left sleeve of his jumper; he couldn’t remember if that was new or not. He had heard Kanan and Ahsoka yelling at each other earlier, but not anything that could be construed as actual fighting.

Kanan stepped into the cockpit and stopped, Ezra barely catching himself from running into his back. As he peered around Kanan, he saw Ahsoka replacing her lightsabers on her hips, keeping her hands on the hilts as she turned towards Kanan.

“Where are my lightsabers?” Kanan said, his voice low and dangerous. “And my blaster?”

“Somewhere safe,” Ahsoka said. “I’m surprised you carry a blaster.”

“I’m flexible,” Kanan snapped.

Ahsoka raised her chin, considering him for a moment before she said, “I’m not allowing an Inquisitor to go armed on my ship. You can have them back when you return to your team.”

“Oh, thanks.” Kanan finally stepped forward into the cockpit, dropping into the co-pilot’s seat and scowling at Ahsoka.

Ezra followed him inside. There were no passenger seats, so he leaned on the back of Kanan’s chair as Ahsoka settled into the pilot’s seat, studying the readings on her boards before she reached for the hyperspace lever with one hand. The other she kept on her lightsaber hilt.

Hyperspace blurred into starlines before settling into realspace. Kanan’s hands settled into fists on the arms of the chair, his jaw tight. Without looking at Ahsoka, he said, “You said this system was uninhabited.”

“It is,” Ahsoka said. “It’s just not unoccupied at the moment.”

Starships hung in the blackness of space, near the double rings that encircled the nearby gas giant. Ezra didn’t know starships very well, but he had seen these before, and the big frigate on the edge of the fleet was unmistakable even to his inexperienced eyes. This wasn’t just any fleet. This was Free Ryloth.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to Kablob for stepping in as beta.
> 
> For new readers, I do daily progress reports over on Tumblr, under the tag "[daily fic snippet](http://bedlamsbard.tumblr.com/tagged/daily-fic-snippet)," if you want to keep track of what I'm working on or get a hint of what's happening in the next chapter or two.


	24. Last Resort

_Ten years ago_   
_Zardossa Stix_

Rising smoke made a black column against the horizon.

Cham Syndulla felt his heart turn over as the _Syndulla’s Gamble_ got close enough to ascertain that it was smoke and not some kind of natural landform, which he had still been holding out hope for until it was close enough to be visible to the naked eye as well as on the ship’s scanners.

“Are you certain?” he asked the ship’s pilot, his cousin-by-marriage Sinthya Syndulla. “Perhaps –”

Her mouth was compressed into a thin, tight line, her lekku taut and her shoulders so tense that Cham half-thought they would shatter if he touched her. It was her co-pilot Jaq who answered. “The coordinates match up, General Syndulla.”

Cham shut his eyes, letting out a shuddering breath. His hands were yellow-knuckled on the back of Sinthya’s chair, gripping so tightly that the worn, cracked synthleather dug into his exposed fingers.

He looked up as a hand landed on his shoulder, squeezing in a way that was probably supposed to be reassuring. Gobi didn’t smile, but he said, “Do not gather stones for their tombs just yet, Syndulla. Your sisters and your wife are strong.”

“So is the Empire, my friend,” Cham said.

He watched the smoke grow larger and larger as the _Gamble_ approached, tense in expectation of an Imperial attack – they must have known that once word reached Ryloth of the colony’s destruction, someone would come to investigate its veracity. It did not take much guessing to expect Cham himself. Not to those who knew just who had been living in the colony.

Soon they began to see the outskirts of the colony. Zardossa Stix was not so very different than Ryloth, one of the reasons that it had attracted the colony’s founders, and many of the same crops had been grown here, carefully laid down alongside the small rivers and oases that sprang up at odd points in the desert. Cham had seen holos of the colony and knew how the fields should have looked; now they were burned, the crops charred to ash. From above, he saw the corpse of a blurrg floating in a pool, poisoning the water.

Nearer the city’s walls, more obvious signs of fighting began to appear. The attack must have come at night, because there were few corpses to be seen here, but Cham spotted a tumbled AT-DP with its chassis cracked open, along with one downed V-wing starfighter. The colony had not been completely unarmed; there were enough veterans from the Clone War here that they had known how to take down tanks and starfighters from the ground, given the chance to do so. It looked like at least a few of them had.

“Should we set down on the landing pad, General?” Jaq asked.

“No,” Cham said, shaking himself out of his reverie. Half the walls were tumbled down; the smoke he had seen from so far away was rising from somewhere within the colony. “Fly over the colony, and then land outside the walls. The landing pad may be booby-trapped.”

The only other area within the walls large enough for the _Syndulla’s Gamble_ to touch down in was the forum, which any half-clever Imperial officer could have predicted and bore the same risk. Cham stared out the viewport as Jaq nodded and did as he had ordered, the _Gamble_ flying low over the city walls.

“There’s nothing on the scanners,” Sinthya said, speaking for the first time in hours. “No lifeforms. Ours or theirs.” She stared at the sensor boards in a bleak sort of way; apparently Jaq was the one flying the ship. Cham couldn’t blame her.

“There is still a chance,” Cham said, with a certainty he didn’t feel.

Sinthya glanced back at him, her mouth twisting, but didn’t respond.

The _Gamble_ circled slowly over the colony, giving Cham a good view of battered and burned buildings – many of them still on fire; thus the smoke – and the bodies littering the streets. From this far up he couldn’t make out any features, but he could tell that while there were stormtroopers among them, the vast majority were Twi’leks. At least, he thought bleakly, there weren’t enough bodies to account for everyone in the colony.

He couldn’t help looking for Alecto and Hera, even though he knew he wouldn’t be able to see them from here.

“I’m going to set down in that field,” Jaq told him, angling the ship away from the city. She squinted doubtfully out the viewport and added, “What’s left of that field.”

Cham dragged his gaze away from the city and nodded. “Very well. I’ll –” _speak to the others_ , he meant to finish, but the words stuck in his throat. He didn’t know if he could bear to meet the gazes of the people who had come with him, who were all friends and relatives of those who had left Ryloth for the colony. Who had come here because they wanted to be safe from what the Empire was doing to Ryloth.

“I’ll speak to them,” Gobi said. He squeezed Cham’s shoulder again, then left the cockpit, his soft-soled step light on the deck.

Cham sank into one of the passenger seats, putting his head in his hands. He had sent his entire family here, mostly against their wishes; he had wanted them to be beyond fear of the Empire’s reprisal against him. He was supposed to be Palpatine’s only target, not his family.

He felt the _Gamble_ touch down on solid ground. Jaq and Sinthya busied themselves shutting down the ship’s engines, then stood. Jaq said, “It’s time, General.”

Cham pushed himself upright. Sinthya didn’t look at him, stepping wide of him as she made her way to the door. Jaq watched him as if bracing herself to catch him if he fell, like she expected him to falter before he left the cockpit. Cham wasn’t certain that he wouldn’t.

_They were supposed to be safe. They were supposed to be safe._

They had all been meant to be safe.

His bootsteps rang heavily on the deck as he made his way out of the cockpit, Jaq trailing him. Everyone but a skeleton crew had already left the _Gamble_ ; they knew better than to leave the ship unattended, and not everyone here wanted to see what was left of the colony.

The others were already standing outside the ship, a few of them with their hands on their blasters but most of them looking bleakly towards the colony walls. Cham’s cousin Themarsa Pehshan Syndulla, who was a doctor, was holding his medical bag close; Cham guessed that the only reason he hadn’t gone over to the nearest bodies was because Gobi had a firm grip on his elbow, keeping him from leaving the group.

All of them had sent family to the colony. Parents, spouses, children, siblings, lovers, friends – all of them here.

All of them gone.

It took all of Cham’s political training to keep his voice calm as he reminded his people that there was no way to be certain that the Empire had gone completely; there were ways to fool lifeform scanners. They couldn’t afford to spend much time here, but they had to search the colony thoroughly. There would be no one left behind here – not the living, not the dead.

“Stay with Themarsa,” he told Gobi as the other man made to follow him. “I don’t want any harm coming to him.”

“I do not think you should be alone, Syndulla,” Gobi said, his brow furrowing in concern.

“I’ll stay with him,” Jaq volunteered.

“I don’t need to be babysat,” Cham said dryly. He stepped aside before either of them could say anything in response and looked up to see his sister-in-law staring at him.

Clotho Syndulla met his gaze for a moment, then looked away. Cham didn’t think she had spoken three words since they had heard about the colony and her silence had been terrible, making everyone steer as warily around her as they did around Cham. She had been at the colony until only a few months ago, before she had left her teenage son and infant daughter in the care of her sister’s household in order to return to Ryloth, to the fight. If harm had come to either of them, Cham wasn’t certain that Clotho would ever be able to forgive herself.

Clotho turned her head a little as Sinthya touched her arm, saying something that Cham was too far away to hear. Clotho nodded, and the two women started towards the city.

Cham shut his eyes. Even the clean desert wind blowing in from the east couldn’t wipe away the scent of death that hung heavy in the air, nor the acrid heaviness of the black smoke still climbing into the sky. He opened his eyes again and stared at it, then made himself step forwards. He couldn’t put this off any longer, not that he was here. Whatever the truth was – whatever had become of his family – he had to know.

Everything inside the city walls felt like death.

Cham walked with his blaster drawn, wary of an Imperial trap, but it soon became clear that the only living beings left in the city were the Twi’leks that had come on the _Syndulla’s Gamble_. Even the desert scavengers had fled at the ship’s approach; the blurrgs and other beasts brought from Ryloth or purchased at the nearest market had been slaughtered. All that seemed to remain were a handful of tookas that watched his passage from the darkened doorways of houses with shattered walls and tumbled roofs. Pets, presumably, but ones now too wary of people to approach.

Everywhere were the dead. Cham had stopped at the first dozen bodies to check their faces, recognizing a tall blue-skinned woman who had fought with him against the Separatists and a man who had been one of the tenants on his family’s estates, but after that there were too many, and Cham only stopped for the ones who might have been his wife, one of his sisters, or one of the children.

Too many children’s corpses lying in the street, still clad in their night-clothes and ripped at by scavengers in the long hours that had passed between the Imperials’ departure and Cham’s arrival.

The city wasn’t so large that it took him long to reach the street where his wife’s house had been built, not far from the forum as befit her status. Cham stopped in the street, staring at it in dismay – the door had clearly been blown open, char-marks still scoring the mudbrick around the doorframe and the shattered window, where tattered curtains still fluttered weakly. He stood frozen, his blood pounding in his ears. Alecto could be in there. His sisters could be in there. _Hera_ could be in there –

Hera could be in there. She could be alive, she could be hiding; she had always been good at that when it was time for her lessons. There was no reason to think that she couldn’t have hidden from the Imperials as well as she had from her tutors back on Ryloth.

As soon as Cham stepped through the doorway, his boots crunching on the remains of the door, he knew that his daughter wasn’t anywhere in the house.

There was a body lying near the center of the atrium, an orange-skinned Twi’lek woman whose single remaining eye was staring blankly at the ceiling. Cham had no conscious memory of crossing the room, just the hard shock that resonated through his whole body as he fell to his knees beside his youngest sister.

Even though her skin was cool and waxy, he still pressed his fingers to Aleema’s neck, hoping vainly for a pulse, but there was nothing. As Cham pulled her clumsily into his lap, he saw the glittering fragments of metal embedded in her brow and the side of her skull; dried blood stained the tile floor where she had lain.

He didn’t know how long he sat there. He knew that he ought to have gotten up to look for Seku and Alecto – for Hera – for the other children – but he couldn’t seem to make himself do so, not with Aleema’s corpse in his arms. He didn’t know if he could bear it if he found his daughter dead in one of the other rooms.

At some point he heard Jaq leave the atrium. She must have searched the rest of the house, because she came back and said gently, “There’s no one else here, Syndulla.”

Cham nodded bleakly, not looking up. His sister was a heavy weight in his arms, on his lap, her lekku spilling messily across his knees.

He wasn’t aware of anyone else entering the house, not until bootsteps clicked on the tile. Cham raised his head to see Clotho standing over him, staring down at him. She was holding a bloody bundle in her arms, cradling it as carefully as she would a living child. One small blue lek, graying with death and spattered with dried blood, dangled down from the swaddling of stained fabric. She sat down beside Cham, holding her daughter’s body close against her chest as she tucked the errant lek back into the fabric.

“They’re gone,” she whispered. “They’re all gone.”

*

_Present day_   
_Somewhere in the Outer Rim Territories_

_Something has happened,_ Hera thought. _It’s been too long._

She let her head fall back against her chair’s headrest, staring out at the viewport and willing Fulcrum’s ship to appear, even if she didn’t have a clue what it looked like. Kanan should have checked in by now. He should have checked in hours ago. It was an easy trick to jump in and out of hyperspace, losing any pursuers along the way; they should have been able to rendezvous with Fulcrum within minutes of leaving the clearinghouse. That had been hours ago.

Fulcrum could have turned Kanan and Ezra in to the Empire. She could have sold them to the Hutts. She could have killed them herself –

_Blast it, Kanan, what were you_ thinking?

Hera folded a hand into a fist and pounded it silently against the armrest, which barely even had the effect of leavening her frustration. The only other person in the cockpit to see was Chopper, who had certainly seen far worse over the past six years; Zeb and Sabine had both retreated once it became evident that nothing was going to happen quickly.

Neither of them could understand why Kanan had gone off with a complete stranger either, of course. The Kanan they knew had always been smarter than that, mostly because they had never known the Kanan who had thrown away his entire life to follow Hera off Gorse.

Hera massaged the skin over her eyes. Arguably that hadn’t turned out very well for Kanan, either.

She looked up as the door behind her slid open. “Any news?” Zeb asked.

Hera shook her head. “Nothing yet. I don’t even know where they might have gone.” Unlike when he had been arrested, where she had known exactly where he was being taken.

“Why did Kanan trust this broad, anyway?” Zeb settled into his usual seat, Sabine following him into the cockpit.

Hera shook her head again. “He said she was a Jedi,” she said, which made Zeb snort.

“Anyone can say they’re a gundark, but that doesn’t give them four arms and a bad attitude.”

“Except she wasn’t the one who said it.” Where would Fulcrum have taken him? What would she even want with Kanan? Ezra, perhaps, if what Kanan had suspected turned out to be true, but _Kanan_? He had been an Inquisitor; no rebel would trust him because of that. Few Imperials would, either, but that was immaterial at the moment.

“I can’t believe we lost him again,” Zeb grumbled. “I’m going to put a blasted bell on him the next time we see him, see how Inquisitor High and Mighty likes _that_ –”

“Jedi High and Mighty,” Sabine reminded him, and his ears twitched.

“ _That’s_ going to take some getting used to.”

_You have no idea_ , Hera thought. She stared out the viewport at the empty space between stars, wondering if there would be anything to get used to or if Kanan was gone. Again. _But he promised_ , she thought fiercely. He had promised that he wouldn’t leave her again, that he would come back. She refused to believe that he would break that promise so soon after he had made it.

“Hera –” Sabine began hesitantly, after a few minutes of awkward silence had passed in the cockpit. “If he doesn’t contact us –”

Before she could finish the sentence, the communications board lit up with an incoming transmission. Hera managed to keep from leaping for it, but she couldn’t help the smile that spread over her face at the sight of Kanan’s hologram.

“Kanan!” she said. “Are you all right? What took you so long?”

An instant later she felt a flicker of doubt. Kanan’s expression was strained; he was standing with his hands clasped behind his back and his shoulders tight, as if for an inspection. And he wasn’t wearing either his lightsaber or his blaster, the holster empty on his thigh. She couldn’t remember the last time she had seen Kanan unarmed; he was never more than arm’s reach from a weapon even when they were in bed together.

“The Empire –” she began.

_“Hera,”_ he said tiredly, _“it’s not the Empire.”_

“Kanan?”

She caught her breath as the field of the hologram suddenly widened, revealing the Togruta woman Fulcrum standing on one side of Kanan. Hera’s father was on his other side.

_“Hera,”_ he said, sounding cautious.

Hera crossed her arms over her chest, anger making her bite off the words. “Father. This is low even for you.”

Cham Syndulla’s jaw twitched. He looked tired, like he hadn’t been sleeping much lately; he also looked a little hopeful. Hera wasn’t entirely certain what he was hoping for, unless it was that neither she nor Kanan would snap and kill him. _“Hera –”_ he began.

“I know what you want,” Hera snapped. “Transmit me your coordinates and I’ll come. I’ll get my partner and his apprentice. And then I never want to see you again.” She closed her hands into fists onto the arms of her chair, yellow-knuckled with fury.

Her father blinked once. _“Your mother and your cousins want to see you,”_ he offered like a salve, as if anything would make this better.

“And I want my partner back, preferably unharmed.” Hera looked away from him, only long practice from years in the Imperial service keeping her anywhere near calm. “Kanan, are you all right? Where’s Ezra?”

His shoulders slumped. _“We’re both fine,”_ he said. _“No one cares about the kid; it’s me they want to throw out an airlock.”_ He sighed. _“Hera, I’m sorry.”_

“Love, it’s not your fault your new friend turned out to be a double-crossing schutta,” Hera said. “We’ll be there soon.” She looked back at her father, anger making her voice shake as she added, “If you hurt him – either of them – I’ll kill you.”

She shut off the transmission before she could say anything else rash and stayed where she was, her hands fisted so tightly that her nails dug into her palms even through the leather of her gloves. She was so angry that she could barely breathe.

Chopper warbled softly after a few moments, and Hera heard Sabine get up to check what it was. “They transmitted the coordinates.”

Hera shut her eyes, then pushed herself up out of her chair. “Then plug them into the navicomputer and let’s get this over with.”

Sabine made a sound of surprise, but Hera didn’t wait to hear what she said after that, just stepped out of the cockpit and let the doors slide shut on her startled crew. She was shaking all over by the time she managed to lock the door of her cabin behind her, leaning back against it with her hands over her face before her knees gave out and she slid to the floor.

Years in the Imperial Academy dormitories had taught her to cry silently. Hera sobbed into her gloved hands, occasionally trying and failing to wipe her face clean on her sleeve. It was too much, it was all too much. She wanted Kanan back – just Kanan, wanted Kanan and the _Ghost_ and the freedom of the stars, not any of the rest of this. Not her father. She hadn’t wanted her father since she had been a child, and that was a long time ago and a lifetime away and it wasn’t _fair_ , none of this was fair, she had done all the right things and it had all gone wrong, and then she had done all the wrong things and it had all gone even worse.

Not fair, not fair, and if there was one thing Hera should have learned from the Empire it was that nothing was ever fair, but she hadn’t expected this.

*

Cham wasn’t certain what he had been expecting from either Hera or her Inquisitor, but whatever it had been, it certainly wasn’t what he got.

After the comm shut off, they stood in awkward silence for a few minutes, looking at each other before the Inquisitor glanced aside. “If you’re going to space me, do it before Hera gets here,” he said, sounding tired.

“No one is spacing anyone,” Ahsoka said. As the Inquisitor raised an eyebrow at her, she said, “He can stay on the _Aegis_ with me until his crew arrives –”

“No,” Cham said. “We have a brig on the _Hope_. I won’t have this…thing…walking around free, even without his weapons. And I want him searched for trackers, hidden weapons, anything else you can think of.”

The Inquisitor flicked a glance at him. He was standing with deceptively casual ease, his hands loose and open at his sides; even without the black leathers he had been wearing when Cham had last seen him on Thyferra he had an air that radiated threat, like a languid predator. The fading bruises on his face did nothing to make him look like less of what he was – one of the Emperor’s deadliest weapons.

_My daughter shares her bed with that thing,_ Cham thought with a chill, and had to resist the urge to draw his blaster and blow the Inquisitor’s brains out. Only the promise he had made to Hera kept him from doing so, and even then…maybe his daughter would thank him for it once the Inquisitor was dead. Once she was truly free.

He put his hand on his blaster grip, considering it; at the motion Ahsoka caught his eye and shook her head. She put her hand on the Inquisitor’s elbow and, as he turned his head to consider her, said, “Do you have a problem with that, Kanan?”

He curled his lip. “It’s not the first time that I’ve been searched – or that I’ve been in a cell. Not even the first time this week.”

“That sounds like an interesting story,” Ahsoka said. “Come on, Kanan.”

She took a step towards the door, where Doriah was waiting with his blasters drawn, but Cham said, “I want him searched now, before he leaves this room. Down to the skin.”

“Fine,” the Inquisitor said, pulling free of Ahsoka’s hand. He reached up to fumble the straps of his pauldron free, dropping the pieces of his armor on the deck with heavy clunks. His belt and empty holster followed a moment later, then his boots and his green jumper. He was reaching for the collar of his black undershirt when he hesitated.

Cham’s grip tightened on his blaster.

The Inquisitor shut his eyes, his teeth digging into his lower lip, then pulled the shirt off over his head.

Doriah made a soft, shocked sound in the back of his throat.

The Inquisitor dropped the shirt on the floor, his eyes still shut. He skimmed out of his trousers a moment later and added, his voice dry, “ _All_ the way to the skin?”

“Yes,” Cham said.

“I used to get tips for this sort of thing,” the Inquisitor mused, then pushed his underwear down and stepped out of it. “Happy now?”

“Ecstatic,” Doriah said flatly. He holstered his blasters and produced a scanning wand, stepping away from the door and towards the Inquisitor. He ran the wand over the Inquisitor, the Inquisitor spreading his arms without being asked. Doriah stepped away a moment later and said, “He’s clean. You can put your pants back on now. That’s more human male than I ever wanted to see again.”

“Flattered to hear it,” the Inquisitor drawled, doing as much. He was reaching for his shirt when Doriah said, “Wait.”

The Inquisitor’s shoulders slumped, but he obeyed without protest. He stood utterly still, shirt dangling from his hand, as Ahsoka stepped around him to push his short ponytail away from the back of his neck. He flinched at her hand, but didn’t pull away.

The last person Cham had seen with the Imperial cog tattooed on the back of their neck had been Ojeda. Before today, he had only seen Imperial slaves marked like that.

He was so focused on the cog that he didn’t notice the alphanumeric code tattooed beneath it at first, not until Ahsoka touched it gently with one finger – the Inquisitor flinched again – and said, “What is this?”

The Inquisitor raised his chin, rolling his shoulders back, and said flatly, “It’s my operating number.” His grip on his shirt was white-knuckled.

Doriah sneered. “I’m surprised an Imperial officer would agree to be marked like a slave.”

His voice flat, the Inquisitor said, “What makes you think I agreed?” He pulled his shirt on and turned to face them, crossing his arms over his chest. “We done with show and tell yet? I’m getting cold.”

“We’re done,” Cham said. “Take him to his cell.”

“Great,” the Inquisitor said, scooping his green jumper off the floor and tugging it on, then his gunbelt. He picked the pieces of his armor up and began to fasten them into place. “I hate long waits.”

“You sure we can’t shoot him?” Doriah demanded.

“You tried that already,” the Inquisitor snapped at him. “On Lothal and Thyferra.”

“Well, you know what they say,” Doriah said. “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.”

“Please,” the Inquisitor said. “Try.”

“Well, if you insist –” Doriah began, drawing one of his blasters.

Cham caught his wrist. “Not unless he gives you a reason,” he said.

Doriah scowled and holstered his blaster again as Cham released him. The Inquisitor flicked a glance at him, fixing the last piece of his armor, his knuckle plate, into place. He pulled his boots on without looking at anyone, the line of his back tight and his shoulders tense.

“Cuff him?” Doriah asked Cham, reaching for the binders he had brought with him.

“That isn’t necessary,” Ahsoka said. She looked at the Inquisitor. “Is it?”

He shrugged. “Is there anything I could say that would make you believe me?”

“No,” Doriah said.

“At least he’s honest,” the Inquisitor observed.

“Binders won’t be necessary,” Ahsoka said again, frowning.

“I won’t have that creature walking free on my ship,” Cham said, making the Inquisitor roll his eyes.

Doriah snapped the binders around his wrists, which the Inquisitor suffered without protest. Ahsoka’s frown deepened.

“Come on,” Doriah said, grabbing the Inquisitor by the shoulder and thrusting him towards the door. “There’s a cell with your name on it.”

“Well, that will be new,” said the Inquisitor. He took two steps, then stopped, and looked back at Ahsoka and Cham. “What about the kid?”

“Free Ryloth does not harm children,” Cham said. “Not even Imperial ones.”

“Ezra’s not an Imperial,” the Inquisitor said, but he let himself be marched towards the door again. Ahsoka followed, keeping her hands on the hilts of her lightsabers despite her earlier words.

Cham stayed behind, watching them leave – there were more guards outside the doors, and they would accompany Doriah, Ahsoka, and the Inquisitor down to the brig. They had barely departed when the door slid open again and Alecto came into the room, frowning over her shoulder before she turned to face him.

“Why is he still alive?”

“Because I would rather not Hera shoot me again,” Cham said, rubbing his bad shoulder, which still ached.

“Once he’s dead, she won’t be affected by his mind tricks anymore,” Alecto said, scowling. She crossed her arms over her chest. “He’s a danger to this ship as long as he’s onboard.”

“I’m aware.”

“If word gets out to the Synedrion that you have an Imperial Inquisitor onboard –”

“It won’t.”

“Once word gets out on this _ship_ that you have an Imperial Inquisitor onboard,” Alecto said sharply. “I’m not sure there are a dozen people on this ship you aren’t related to who won’t want to lynch him in his cell.” She paused and considered. “I’m not sure there are a dozen people on this ship you _are_ related to who don’t want to lynch him in his cell.”

“Are you one of them?” Cham inquired, tensing in expectation of the answer.

“ _I_ think you should have spaced him as soon as he came onboard,” Alecto said. “But I’m not going to go in there and shoot him, if that’s what you’re asking.” She took a deep breath, then said in a rush, “Hera said that she would come?”

“She wasn’t happy about it, but yes, she agreed.” Cham put his hands on Alecto’s shoulders, feeling her tension. “Hera’s coming. She’s coming here.”

*

Hera stayed kneeling on the floor until her knees protested, then she pushed herself slowly up to her feet, her whole body aching as if drained of energy. She made her way stiffly over to her bunk, stripping off her wet gloves and damp jacket as she went and letting them fall to the floor behind her. She pulled her shirt off too, tugging her lekku free of the collar, and then kicked off her boots and skinned out of her pants until she was standing nearly naked in her cabin, shivering in the cool blast of air from the ship’s ventilation system.

_They_ took _him,_ she thought again, fine for a moment until the reality of what that meant came crashing down on her. Her parents had nearly killed Kanan once before, and now he was there, they had him, they would – they would –

Hera sank down onto her bunk, putting her head in her hands, but she didn’t have any tears left. Instead she curled up in her unmade bed, where the sheets still smelled like Kanan, and pulled a pillow against her chest. It was easier to think about what her parents might do to Kanan now that they had him than it was to think about her parents at all, about the ghosts Hera had thought she had exorcised years ago.

Hera felt fourteen years old and terrified again, sitting in a cell with her whole future stretched out before her – a future spent in a room whose span Hera knew intimately, whose width she could still walk with her eyes close, her arms stretched out to touch the places where the walls should have been. She had walked those walls more times than she could count in the decade since she had left the Spire, and knew that if she got up, if she dragged herself out the bed she shared with Kanan, she could do so now.

Hera didn’t get up. Instead she stayed where she was, clutching the pillow to herself. Her eyes felt dry and swollen, her body heavy, her lekku dragging at the back of her skull like a pair of deadweights.

It was an all too familiar feeling; Hera had spent more of her life crying than she cared to think about. Her head throbbing, Hera finally pushed herself upright, sitting on the edge of her bunk with the pillow still held against her. She sat there silently, staring at the locked door, and felt a flutter of panic in her chest, the kind of panic that had led to a fourteen-year-old girl throwing herself at the door to her cell and pounding at it until her fists bled. She had done it often enough that ten years later she still had the scars.

That had been a long time ago, and this was her room, not a cell. She was the one who had locked the door, and she could get out when she wanted to. That made all the difference.

Hera took a shuddering breath, then made herself set the pillow aside and get up. She found a clean shirt and pants, the dark sober colors that plainclothes ISB officers favored, and picked her gun belt and blaster up off the floor where she had dropped them. She was pulling her boots on when she looked up and saw her uniform.

Hera hadn’t been able to bear the idea of packing it away, so she had hung it up the way she normally did, since it kept the fabric from wrinkling. She stared at it blankly, at the neat red and blue squares of her rank insignia on the breast – everything she had worked so hard for over the past decade. Gone.

She swallowed and looked aside, pulling her second boot on and smoothing down the leg of her trousers where it had gotten bunched up. She stood for a moment, indecisive, then licked her lips and went to the door, touching the control to unlock it. Even after all this time, she still felt a murmur of relief as the door slid open without even the hesitation of a creaky mechanism.

She found Zeb and Sabine in the lounge along with Chopper, looking at a hologram of the Free Ryloth fleet’s last known configuration. Sabine was pointing at the frigate that hung near the front of the elongated spear tip – the weaker ships had already begun jumping to hyperspace at the time – and saying, “They’ll be keeping Kanan and Ezra here, on the flagship. The –” She squinted at the labels in the hologram, from the Imperial Navy computers. “The _Forlorn Hope_? That’s a weird name for a ship.”

“It’s named after the Syndulla clan lands, the Tann province,” Hera said, making them look up as she came in. “The Twi’leki word for ‘hope’ is ‘ _tann_.’” She sighed, realizing she was stalling, and added, “What do you have so far?”

Sabine scooted over so that Hera could sit down beside her, reaching for the holoprojector controls. The image of the fleet blinked out, replaced by a hologram of a Separatist war frigate without the _Forlorn Hope_ ’s modifications. “We don’t have the schematics for the flagship, but the old Separatist schematics are in the public record, and they can’t have changed the ship that much. That means the holding cells will be here – C-27.” A red light blinked in the place she had indicated. “That has to be where they’re keeping Kanan.”

Zeb shook his head. “I don’t think so.” When Sabine frowned at him, he said, “There are a lot of people living on that ship, right? There’s no way they expected to have to keep prisoners long-term. If you ask me, they would have converted the cells into living quarters and put the brig somewhere else.”

Hera nodded slowly. “A lot of the old droid ships only had minimal life support, if any. The frigates were originally a Trade Federation design, so they had more than some of the others, but when the ship was refitted it would have had to be installed everywhere else. It would already have been in this holding area.”

Sabine scowled, disgruntled at having her theory rebutted, but allowed, “I’d forgotten about that. They’re still going to have a brig somewhere, though, and the most likely place is probably – here.” She jabbed a finger into the hologram, which obligingly lit up another red dot for her. “Hangar bays here, here, and here,” she added, tracing them with her finger, “along with airlocks at regular intervals all along here, if the Twi’leks kept them.” She pulled up the hologram of the fleet again, enhancing it to only show the _Forlorn Hope_ , and ran the hull analysis software. “Which it looks like they did.”

“You really think we’re going to have to infil?” Zeb asked Hera, sounding a little surprised. “Any chance they’re going to just hand Kanan and the kid over when we get there?”

“You don’t know my father,” Hera said, shaking her head. “He’s already tried to kill Kanan once before, and nearly succeeded.”

Sabine and Zeb glanced at each other, but it was Chopper who asked the question.

“Back on Thyferra, when Kanan was shot,” Hera confirmed. She rubbed a hand over her face, feeling the edges of her panic creep up on her again. “I’m fairly sure he won’t try it again, at least not before I get there.” She hesitated for a moment, then added, “And I don’t think Fulcrum actually wants Kanan dead.”

Sabine gave her a strange look. “Hera, whoever she is, she _kidnapped_ Kanan.”

“I know,” Hera said. She took a breath, then added, “According to ISB reports, Fulcrum has been reported all over the galaxy; Lothal was the first time she’s ever been sighted with Free Ryloth. That means she has connections with other rebel cells. Kanan is an Imperial deserter. Even if my father cares more about the fact that he sleeps with me than he does about that, she won’t. She’ll want to interrogate him before she executes him, and for that he needs to be alive.”

Zeb and Sabine looked at each other again, and Chopper warbled warningly. Hera clenched her hands under the holotable, her heart in her throat. They’d dealt with enough rebels to know what that meant when it came to Imperial collaborators or captured officers; it always ended in bodies.

“Whatever they do to him,” Hera said, “he’s had worse.”

Sabine hesitated, indecision writ across her face, and then said, “What about your family, Hera? If you really think they’re not going to hand Kanan and Ezra over –”

Hera dug her nails into her palms. “I’ll deal with my parents. For now, plan for a jailbreak.”

*

Kanan didn’t know how long he had been meditating when he felt the murmur of a disturbance in the Force, a resonance as though someone had tapped lightly on a bell. He let himself slip out of his trance, touching his bare fingertips to the cool metal of the deck to ground himself in his own body before he looked up.

Ahsoka, who had been sitting on the other side of the cell’s ray shield, was already on her feet. She frowned at him before the door slid open, admitting a tall, green-skinned Twi’lek woman who was still handsome despite the dramatic scar cutting across one side of her face. Kanan stood up, since it seemed rude to remain sitting when both women were standing, and because he had a feeling he knew who this was.

The woman came to a halt in front of his cell and studied him silently through the shield, then flicked a glance at Ahsoka and said, “Leave us.”

Ahsoka hesitated. “Are you certain –”

“From what I know of Imperial Inquisitors, if he wants to kill me, I doubt you’ll be able to stop him,” said the woman. She had a deep, husky voice for a woman and a strong Rylothean accent, but there was something about the way she formed her vowels that reminded him of Hera. “And if he doesn’t, then I have nothing to fear.”

Ahsoka frowned, but said, “I’ll be outside if you need me –”

“Ahsoka,” Kanan said, making both women look at him. “Can you do me a favor?”

Her brows drew together, but she didn’t say no, so Kanan decided to take that as a tentative affirmative.

“Can you find the kid and make sure he hasn’t gotten into too much trouble? He’s got itchy fingers. And he’s never been on a starship bigger than the _Ghost_ before.”

Ahsoka studied him in silence for a few moments, then nodded. “I’ll find him,” she said, then frowned. “I told him to stay on the _Aegis_.”

“He’s not so good with instructions,” Kanan said dryly. “I told him not to do anything stupid and he stormed the Crucible.”

“Extremely ambitious of him,” Ahsoka remarked, her brows rising. She gave him another considering look before turning away, resting a hand briefly on the Twi’lek woman’s shoulder as she left. The hatch that closed behind her sounded decidedly final.

Kanan looked back at the Twi’lek woman, who hadn’t bothered to watch Ahsoka leave. All of her attention was fixed on him, her green eyes sharp and penetrating. “Do you know who I am?” she asked abruptly.

“I think so,” Kanan said. “You’re Hera’s mother, aren’t you?”

“I’m Alecto Syndulla.” She crossed her arms over her chest, studying him. “How long have you known my daughter?”

“Six years,” Kanan said.

She blinked, clearly doing the math in her head and coming up with different ages than she had been expecting. Her voice cold, she said, “Do you know what they did to her? What the Empire did to my daughter?”

“Some of it,” Kanan said cautiously.

“Because you were a part of it?”

“No!” he said, stunned. “I wasn’t – I didn’t meet Hera until she was already an active field agent. I never knew her when she was at the academy. Or –” He stopped abruptly.

“Or?” Alecto demanded. “Do you know where she was before she went to the Imperial Academy?”

Kanan shut his eyes. “Yeah,” he said after a moment, looking up again. “I know. But that’s her story to tell, not mine. If she wants to tell you, she’ll tell you when she gets here. If she doesn’t, well, that’s her choice.”

“I know she was in an Imperial black prison,” Alecto snapped, biting off the words. “She was fourteen! She was a child!”

“I wasn’t there,” Kanan said through his teeth, his fists clenching at his sides. “It wasn’t my fault!”

“You were part of it.”

“No, I wasn’t! Before I met Hera my entire experience with the Empire involved running away from it, so no, I had nothing to do with what happened to her at the Spire or the academy.” Kanan had bared his teeth like his namesake before he realized what he was doing; he was out of practice losing his temper with anyone but another Inquisitor, where anything and everything went.

Hera’s mother looked supremely unimpressed by this display, for which Kanan couldn’t blame her. He wasn’t too impressed with himself either.

“My daughter is coming home,” she said. “To her family. Where she belongs.”

“I think that’s up to her, not you,” Kanan said. He crossed his arms over his chest. “Hera’s old enough and smart enough to know who she is and what she wants. She’ll make her choice.”

Alecto sneered, her scar making the expression ugly. “And you believe that she’ll choose you? She’s Syndulla. Her place is here.”

“I think that’s up to Hera,” Kanan repeated. “She’s a grown woman. She can make her own choices.”

“That will be a lot easier without any outside influences,” Alecto said. She gave him an unimpressed look.

“Outside – you think I _mindtricked_ Hera into sleeping with me?” Kanan demanded, too startled to be delicate. “You think I’d do that? You think that Hera would ever do anything that she didn’t want to?”

“I think you’re an Inquisitor,” Alecto said coolly. “And you would do whatever you could to get something you wanted, including my daughter.”

Kanan snorted. “You don’t know anything about me,” he said. “And you don’t know anything about Hera, either.”

“I’m her mother,” Alecto said. “I know everything about her that I need to.”

“I think Hera will have something to say about that.”

“We’ll see about that.” Alecto gave him a dismissive look, then turned to go.

“Yeah,” Kanan said. “We will.”

Her shoulders went stiff, but she didn’t turn back, just went down to the airlock and wrapped her knuckles against it. It slid open in response, giving Kanan a brief view of a pair of Twi’lek guards standing in the corridor outside before it shut again.

Kanan sank back down onto the floor of the cell, dropping his head into his hands. He had a bad feeling about this.

*

Keto Amersu was waiting in the Residency when Cham reached his stateroom, leaning against the wall beside the door and seemingly oblivious of the mouse droid parked at the opposite end of the corridor. The mouse droid, Cham suspected, was one of Neso Cseh Syndulla’s spies, keeping an eye on Keto like Cham had asked.

Cham eyed Keto tiredly. With an Inquisitor in the brig and his daughter on her way, Cham didn’t particularly feel up to a conversation whose likely topics included fleet politics, alliance overtures, or the spy Neso was searching for. Though if Keto brought up the latter then Cham _would_ have a problem, since only four people in the fleet were supposed to know about that and Keto wasn’t one of them.

“Can I help you with something?” Cham asked as Keto glanced up. He hadn’t had a chance to talk to Keto last night after Doriah and Xiaan had come to find him, not with everything else going on.

“Can we speak in private?”

“Of course.” Cham stepped around Keto to unlock the door of his stateroom, showing the other man inside as the lights came on. “Can I offer you a drink?”

When Keto inclined his head, Cham went to the liquor cabinet, considering his dwindling supply of Rylothean liquors. There was still some of the tzikeh he and Secchun had shared, but tradition and ritual was inscribed too deeply on Cham’s soul for that, so he bypassed it and picked up a bottle of pale green arien instead, pouring out two glasses. As he turned back, he saw Keto’s gaze flicker to the untouched bottle of tzikeh, but he took the glass of arien without protesting.

“I wanted to thank you for your hospitality,” Keto said. “I appreciate what you’ve done for me and my people since we lost the _Coba_.”

“It is my pleasure,” Cham said. “I’m sorry that we couldn’t do more. I’ve been trying to free up enough pilots and shuttles so that you and the rest of the _Coba_ ’s crew can transfer to another Amersu ship, but you understand that we’ve been very busy.”

“I understand,” Keto said. He tasted his arien and made an appreciative sound. “From your estates on Ryloth?”

“I only have a few bottles left,” Cham admitted. “The estate’s no longer there; I assume the orchards aren’t either.”

Keto turned the glass so that the light from the overheads shone through the liquor, his brows narrowed in thought. “The estate _is_ still there,” he said. “Or at least it was when I was last on Ryloth. I don’t know about the orchards.”

Cham arched a brow. “Infested with Imperials, I assume,” he said. While he still had contacts on Ryloth, most of them were in Lessu, not in the Tann Province, and they had more important information to pass on than the disposition of the Syndulla family lands.

“There are Imperials all over Ryloth,” Keto said matter-of-factly. “They’re on all the clan lands, not just Syndulla.” He sat down on the edge of the sofa, still turning the glass between his fingers.

Cham sat down in the armchair. “Have you spoken to your brother lately?”

Keto’s gaze flickered to the liquor cabinet again, to the bottle of tzikeh that was only shared between clan heads. “Not lately. Kolo and I didn’t part on the best of terms.”

Given that Keto had taken half the clan and a considerable portion of the Amersu family fortune with him when he had left Ryloth to join the fleet, Cham wasn’t surprised by that. From what he had heard, Kolo Amersu had had to do some quick talking to not only keep control of what remained of the Amersu clan, but to stay out of an Imperial prison.

Keto took a sip of his arien, then said, “What I wanted to speak to you about does have to do with the clan, actually. Both our clans.”

Cham leaned forward and put his glass down on the low table, nudging aside a stack of flimsiplasts and a datapad in order to do so. “Xiaan and Doriah told me about your proposal.”

“She’s of age –” Keto began.

“And she already gave you a response,” Cham said flatly. “She’s old enough to know her own mind.”

Keto said, “I’ve heard you have another niece onboard, another survivor from the colony –” He hesitated for a moment under Cham’s glare. “Joining our clans would be good for the fleet,” he went on. “Amersu has allies both within the fleet and on Ryloth, allies that would serve us all well. The Synedrion –”

“Would see any alliance marriage as an attempt to consolidate power on my part,” Cham said. “For that matter, Secchun Fenn would see it as a direct insult to the Fenn clan since Xiaan has turned down Nawara. I don’t think either of our clans could afford her as an enemy when we already have the Empire against us.”

Keto’s mouth went tight. “I know Amersu is a patrician clan, not a curial one –”

“Caste has nothing to do with it,” Cham said. “Xiaan already gave you her answer.”

“And your other niece?”

“I would advise that you stay away from Ojeda. She’s only just returned to the fleet.” Cham stood up, Keto following belatedly. “With the fleet in disarray and the Empire on our trail, now is not the time to discuss this. Look to your own clan first, Keto.”

Keto frowned at the rebuke. “My clan –”

“Lost a ship in the last battle,” Cham reminded him. “Get your own folk seen to before you worry about mine.”

Keto was at the door before he said, “I don’t see why you concern yourself with the Synedrion, Syndulla. You could _be_ the Synedrion; you are the fleet.”

“I believe in democracy,” Cham said. “And in the people of Ryloth.”

“Why?”

When Cham blinked at him, Keto clarified, “What good has democracy ever done Ryloth? The Empire came no matter what the Curia decided. So did the Separatists during the Clone War. Everyone knows that you didn’t wait for the Curia to vote on what they thought should be done, what might placate the Empire for a few days more, you fought. And the fleet – the Synedrion never does anything but argue. I don’t think we’ve agreed on anything once since Amersu has been with the fleet. They all listen to you, Syndulla. You could end all that. Why don’t you?”

Cham crossed his arms over his chest. “By making myself dictator? Or king?”

“Why not? Palpatine did it. And there have been kings on Ryloth before.”

“I don’t think the Emperor is the being I want to take lessons in governance from.” Cham frowned at Keto, then reminded himself that Keto Amersu was young and rash and an idealist, much like Cham himself had once been. Of course, when Cham had been Keto’s age the galaxy had been at peace.

“If I wanted to do as you suggest,” Cham said slowly, “I would be going against everything I have spent my life fighting for. Free Ryloth’s strength is in unity – and in all of us, not in any one being. To put any single being above the others would destroy that.”

“But that is how the Synedrion is,” Keto said. “That’s how the fleet is. You created this fleet, Syndulla. You created Free Ryloth. Everyone listens to you. Why not use that? Why bother with an illusion that does nothing but waste time and energy that could be better put to other purposes?”

“Because this is not the Empire,” Cham said simply. “I’ll see what I can do to make sure you get back to your own ships as soon as possible, Keto.”

Keto stepped unwillingly into the corridor, frowning deeply and clearly searching for a response. Finally he just inclined his head slightly and turned away, vanishing around the corner just as Alecto appeared.

She turned to watch him and the mouse droid following him go, then came down the corridor to meet Cham where he was still standing in the doorway. “Don’t tell me the Amersu came to you about Xiaan?”

“He offered for Ojeda too,” Cham said, standing back to let her into the room. “I told him no.”

“You’d think he’d have better things to worry about.” Alecto crossed her arms over her chest, waiting until the door had slid closed behind them before she added, “You need to kill that man.”

“That seems like a rather rash reaction to wanting to declare me Emperor of Ryloth; Amersu is a Syndulla ally, even if Keto clearly doesn’t think we’re close enough.”

“I don’t mean Keto Amersu,” Alecto said, though she arched an eyebrow at this assertion. “I mean Hera’s Inquisitor.”

“A tempting proposal.” Cham sank down into the armchair again, rubbing at the base of his lekku.

Alecto leaned an elbow on the back of the armchair and looked down at him with curiosity. “You don’t think so?”

“I believe that Hera will never forgive us if he dies.” Cham tilted his head back to meet her eyes. “You’ve spoken to him. What do you think?”

She hesitated. “I think – I think that he believes what he’s saying. What I’m not certain of is whether he should be believed.” She sighed. “I’ve met plenty of people who believe things that aren’t true because they want them to be.” Dryly, she added, “Most of them friends of yours.”

“The danger of politics,” Cham agreed. “Though I’ve found that to be no less true in Free Ryloth than it was in the Curia.” He frowned, thinking back over his meeting with the Inquisitors – he wasn’t certain that it deserved being called a conversation. “That was my assessment as well, though he wasn’t particularly interested in speaking to me at the time.”

“He’s dangerous,” Alecto said, straightening up and going over to the liquor cabinet. She frowned at the bottles until she found something to her liking, then poured out two glasses and returned to Cham’s side. “He’s an Imperial officer; he’s done terrible things in the Emperor’s name.”

Cham took the glass she passed him, which turned out to be a very mild meiloorun-flavored wine. “And the fact that he’s sleeping with our daughter has nothing to do with it?”

“If he wasn’t sleeping with our daughter then he wouldn’t even be here.” Alecto set her glass down and rubbed at her face, her expression tired. “It’s hard, Cham. I want Hera back so badly it hurts to think about anything else. I want to kill everyone who kept her from me all these years. Sometimes that includes you.”

“I know,” Cham said.

“What Hera said on Thyferra…” Alecto trailed off, looking down at her hands. “She believes that we abandoned her. I need to see her, Cham, I need to tell her that that was all a lie, that I never left her behind. I need her to know that. I need her to listen to me. And – I need my daughter. I need her to be here.”

She sank down onto the arm of his chair, passing her hands over her face again. “I want that man dead, but sometimes I’m not sure why. If he hurt her, or if it’s just because he was with her when I wasn’t, or because I know – I _know_ – that she’ll never want to stay with us while he’s still breathing –” She caught her breath again. “But I need my daughter, Cham.”

Cham reached for her hand, and she let him take it, staring down at his orange fingers laid along her green ones. “I know,” he said. He pressed a kiss to her knuckles. “Whatever happens next, my love – we did it. We found our daughter.”

*

Free Ryloth somehow managed to look even more ragtag than it had the last time Hera had seen it, which was saying something considering the fact that the last time had been in the midst of a battle. As the _Ghost_ flashed out of hyperspace, she saw that the fleet had rearranged its formation; Hera glanced at her sensor boards as they began to automatically catalogue the new contacts, the enhanced systems calculating visible damage and comparing the new information to the databank records from the battle.

“I’m picking up activity around some of the hulls, but we’re still too far out to get any details,” Sabine said, looking at the boards in the co-pilot’s station. “They must still be doing repairs. And it looks like about half a dozen of these ships have their hyperdrives offline. We’ve got incoming.”

Hera had already seen the two starfighters angling in towards them, old Clone Wars-era Headhunters whose hulls had been repainted with Rylothean designs – Syndulla patterns, she saw as one of them swooped close enough for her to make them out through the viewport. That also meant that she was close enough to see the pilot, a green-skinned Twi’lek whose close-fitting helmet disguised his or her features.

The comm board beeped to signal an incoming transmission. Hera stared at it, aware of Sabine and Zeb both watching her, then finally reached to accept it. “This is _Ghost_.”

_“Ghost, this is Arrow Leader and Arrow Two; we’ll escort you in. You’ve got docking on the_ Forlorn Hope _’s portside hangar bay.”_

The voice was male and familiar, speaking in Twi’leki rather than Basic. Hera said, “Doriah?”

The pilot she had seen a moment ago gave her a thumbs up from the cockpit of his Headhunter.

_Wonderful_ , Hera thought, annoyed for no reason she could determine. Except for the fact that she was here at all, though she supposed that wasn’t an excuse to take it out on Doriah.

The two starfighters settled in on either side and a little ahead of the _Ghost_ as they led the way towards the big star frigate that hunt on the outer edge of the fleet. As they approached, a few more sensor contacts popped up on the boards, signals that had been too small to pick up earlier – spacesuited lifeforms, astromech droids, starfighters on patrol on the far side of the fleet.

“We’re being hailed by the frigate,” Sabine noted; Hera had already seen the comm blinking again. “Should I answer it?”

“Ask my cousin; this is his show,” Hera said.

Doriah’s response came a moment later, in Basic this time, _“We’ll take care of it. Uncle Cham cleared it with the bridge, so it’s probably just some watch-stander who didn’t get the memo.”_

That, Hera could believe. This was the rebels, not the Imperial Navy.

Except a moment later, as they were about to enter what the _Ghost_ ’s sensor boards marked out as the frigate’s firing envelope, Sabine said, “Uh, Hera – it’s the frigate again. They’re saying they’ll shoot if we don’t identify ourselves.”

Hera braked the _Ghost_ , bleeding off the ship’s forward momentum in a turn that took them parallel to the range of the frigate’s guns, and opened a new comm channel. “ _Forlorn Hope_ , this is _Ghost_ ,” she said in Twi’leki.

_“Transmit your clearance code.”_

No one had given Hera a clearance code. She silenced the comm and said, “Chopper, make sure the shields are at full power,” then turned the comm back on. “We don’t have one. We’re here by invitation of General Cham Syndulla.”

There was a momentary pause, then the woman on the other end of the comm said, _“Who is this?”_

“This is Ag – this is Hera Syndulla.”

“Your cousin’s hailing us again,” Sabine put in. “He wants to know why we’ve stopped.”

“So would I,” Hera grumbled.

“You know, I was really thinking that we’d get away from protocol once we left the Empire,” Zeb remarked, leaning forward from his seat to peer over Hera’s shoulder out the viewport.

“Yeah, you and me both, big guy,” Sabine said.

As Hera waited for the frigate’s response, she was aware that several other nearby ships had seen the commotion and had shifted their positions slightly to watch them. Or possibly to get better aim; Hera resisted the urge to check the _Ghost_ ’s shields again.

Another light began to blink on the comm board, signaling another incoming transmission from a third ship. “Aren’t we popular today,” Hera muttered, then louder, “ _Hope_ , _Ghost_ here. Do we have permission to land?”

_“Hold, Ghost.”_ The comm went silent. Hera tapped her fingers on the _Ghost_ ’s control yoke, her irritation briefly eclipsing her fear for Kanan and her unhappiness at being here at all. From her quick glance at Doriah, visible through the cockpit of his starfighter, he seemed to be involved in a fierce argument, presumably with the same person Hera had been talking to.

Eventually, the woman on the _Forlorn Hope_ said, _“Proceed, Ghost.”_

“Copy, _Hope_ ,” Hera said, then realized that meant she was actually going to have to land on the _Forlorn Hope_ and swore silently. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to, it was just that – well, she didn’t want to be here. In an ideal world she could land, collect Kanan and Ezra, and lift off again in less than five minutes, but she knew that that wasn’t going to happen. Her father wouldn’t let that happen.

For a moment she entertained the fantasy that Kanan was going to get tired of waiting and break out of whatever prison they were keeping him to meet her in the hangar bay, but she knew that wasn’t going to happen. Not because Kanan wasn’t perfectly capable of it – Hera doubted that there was any cell on the ship that could hold a fully-trained Inquisitor who didn’t want to be there – but because he was too polite to do so when he knew Hera was coming, since he had to know that it would make trouble for her.

_Stupid Jedi manners._ That was definitely something that hadn’t come from the Crucible.

She fell in with the two starfighters again, ignoring the way her lekku tightened as they passed into the _Forlorn Hope_ ’s weapons envelope. The light on the comm board was still blinking; Hera considered it, wondering if it was worth responding to. The ID said that it wasn’t coming from the _Forlorn Hope_ , but from another ship in the fleet, the _Mercy Kill_. According to the ISB files, it was home to the head of the only other curial clan represented in the fleet; Hera didn’t know anything about fleet politics, didn’t particularly care, and didn’t want to get involved, so she ignored it.

The hangar doors were open, meaning that Hera caught sight of her parents waiting for her inside the landing bay before the _Ghost_ passed through the magnetic shield protecting it from vacuum. She faltered for a moment, enough that Sabine glanced worriedly at her, but her pilot’s training held and she landed the ship smoothly.

“Keep the boards on standby?” Sabine asked.

Hera sighed. “That’s a little too much optimism for me right now.” She busied herself with shutting down the ship’s systems, careful not to look out the viewport and at her parents. Her hands were shaking a little; nothing she tried to do seemed to be able to stop it.

She turned to face Zeb and Sabine. “I don’t know how long we’ll be here,” she said. “Hopefully not long, but I don’t know what my father has planned, except that he’s going to want me to stay here. I’m not going to do that.” She took a deep breath. “While we’re here, I want you to be careful. My father is a fanatic, an extremist, and so is everyone else in this fleet. They all chose to leave Ryloth, to walk away from their homes and their families and their lives there because they weren’t willing to compromise with the Empire. A lot of them aren’t going to like humans or other non-Twi’leks very much; none of them are going to like former Imperials.”

“Twi’lek supremacists?” Sabine asked.

“More like Twi’lek isolationists,” Hera said, “but that doesn’t mean there’s going to be much difference in their methods.” She rubbed the side of her thumb against the knee of her trousers, the back of her neck itching. “There’s something else going on here too. Fulcrum isn’t a Twi’lek, but she’s a Force-user – Kanan said she was Jedi-trained, like him – and she must have ties to other rebel cells. I don’t know if she’s hoping to recruit or if she just wants information, but either way it doesn’t look good for us. Be careful about what you say, don’t go anywhere alone, and _don’t_ tell anyone that you used to work for the Empire.”

Zeb cracked his knuckles. “Anyone who wants to start something –”

Chopper snickered, a familiar _whap-whap_ sound that eased a little of Hera’s tension.

“The only one of us who actually looks like an Imperial officer is Kanan,” Hera said, “– no offense, Sabine.”

“Hey, none taken, you know how I feel about that.” She fingered the ends of her newly-blue hair, which she had dyed while they were in hyperspace. From the array of paint jars that had taken up residence in the lounge, her armor was about to follow suit whenever they finished up here.

Hera forced a smile. “I know, and right now I’ve never been more grateful that you aren’t good at following regs.”

“What can I say? It’s a gift.” Sabine leaned forward earnestly. “Hera, we’re on your side. Whatever you need, we’re there. If you want us to sit back and smile pretty, we can do that. If you want us to blow a hole in the side of this boat, we can do that too.”

“Let’s save that for plan B,” Hera said. “Right now, I’m just hoping that my father will follow through with one of his promises for once and hand Kanan and Ezra over so that we can get out of here.” She fisted her hands on top of her knees, then added again, “Remember that we’re dealing with someone who was crazy enough to try and assassinate the Emperor ten years ago.”

“Wait –” Zeb said. “What?”

“I’ll tell you later,” Sabine said.

Hera pushed herself to her feet, still not looking out the viewport. “You were both on Lothal on Empire Day; you saw what they were capable of. Don’t underestimate them. Free Ryloth is smart, it’s ruthless, and they’ll do whatever they think is necessary to get what they want. And I don’t know what that is right now; that’s what makes me nervous. So be careful.”

“Yeah, Hera,” Sabine said, her expression softening. She tossed off a sloppy salute. “Whatever you need.”

_What I need is to not be here_ , Hera thought, but didn’t voice the words. “Let’s just get this over with,” she said instead, reaching for the ladder that led to the hold.

The others followed her down as Hera hesitated, her hand hovering over the ramp release before she finally touched it. At her gesture, Zeb and Sabine hung back, though neither seemed happy about it. They were both watching the figures standing on the hangar deck near the _Ghost_ ; Doriah, who had already climbed out of his starfighter, was making his way across to them. He paused as he saw Hera standing at the top of the _Ghost_ ’s ramp, glanced at the small group, and then turned towards the _Ghost_.

It was easier to concentrate on Doriah’s presence than that of the group, so Hera made her way slowly down the ramp to meet him. Chopper trundled along beside her; Hera didn’t have the heart to tell him to go back. She brushed her fingers over his dome, then braced herself and looked down at Doriah, who was waiting at the foot of the ramp.

“Hey,” he said gently in Twi’leki. “You came.”

Hera swallowed. “My father didn’t give me much choice, did he?”

Doriah’s gaze went hooded for an instant in acknowledgment. Then he saw Chopper peering out from behind Hera and blinked. “Is that – Chopper?”

Chopper whistled acknowledgment.

Doriah blinked at him. “I just assumed the Empire scrapped him when they destroyed the colony.”

Hera rested a hand on Chopper’s dome to forestall his response to that statement, which would undoubtedly be rude, and said, “Agent Beneke said that he was taken from the colony along with most of the other droids. They kept him deactivated and in storage until I went into the field, then Agent Beneke gave him back to me as a…a present for passing my qualifications.”

“Wiped and reprogrammed, right?”

This time Chopper _did_ say something rude, waving one of his manipulators at him. Hera grimaced, remembering the reason she usually tried to keep him away from other Imperial officers, but Doriah just grinned. “You know that was a bribe, right?”

“It was a reward,” Hera said, stiffening. “And it was a long time ago.” She pressed her lips together, crossing her arms over her chest. “Is he here?”

“Hera –”

“It’s a simple question. Is he here?”

Doriah stared at her, searching her features for something that only he knew, and finally said, “He’s in the brig. What did you think we were going to do, throw him out an airlock?”

“The thought crossed my mind.”

“Well, lucky for you and your boyfriend, we’re not the Empire.”

Hera stiffened. “Considering where Kanan was a few days ago, right now I don’t really see the difference.” Before her cousin could respond, she added, “Chopper, stay with the ship,” and stepped down off the _Ghost_ ’s ramp.

It felt decidedly final, as if landing on a rebel ship hadn’t meant anything but actually walking on one was. Hera hesitated briefly, wanting more than nearly anything else to run back up into the _Ghost_ , close up the ramp, and fly away – back to the Empire, back to Gorse, anywhere but here. Except the only thing that she wanted more than that was Kanan.

_He had better appreciate this_ , she thought, fisting her hands so tightly her leather gloves strained over her knuckles. He would, of course. He was surprisingly sensitive to things like that.

Her mother came forward as Hera hesitated, her hands outstretched and her expression open and hopeful. Hera stopped inadvertently.

Her mother’s face fell, but she closed the distance between them anyway. She took Hera’s hands in hers, which was when Hera realized she was shaking.

_She abandoned you. She left you behind in the Spire, she didn’t even bother to look for you._ Despite that, despite that knowledge that had festered inside her for ten years like a wound gone bad, there had been times that Hera had wanted her mother so badly it ached. _She abandoned you. She tried to kill Kanan. She helped my father kill Agent Beneke._

“Baby,” her mother said. Her hands were warm, with small scars visible on her green knuckles – only a shade darker than Hera’s, where her fingerless gloves bared her skin. “My baby.” She touched Hera’s face like she couldn’t quite believe Hera was there and was reassuring herself of her presence. “My darling girl.”

Hera licked her lips. Though her mother was still a hair taller than she was, Hera didn’t have to look up at her anymore; they were nearly the same height.

That wasn’t right. Hera shouldn’t have been able to look her mother in the eye.

“Mama,” she managed to say eventually, her voice a little higher than she had intended. She could have slapped herself; she wasn’t a child anymore, and she wasn’t here for a family reunion. _You’re an Imperial officer. Act like one._

A moment later she remembered that she wasn’t an officer anymore; she had deserted her post. Coming here made her not just a deserter, but a traitor too.

“Mother,” Hera said. Her mother’s expression, which had begun to regain a little of its earlier hopefulness, betrayed a little dismay, but she didn’t take her hands away. Hera should have stepped back and tried to regain her composure, but she couldn’t quite make herself pull away from her mother. As a result, her voice wavered a little when she said, “You have something that belongs to me.”

Her mother blinked once. Silence drew out between them, long enough for Hera to wonder wildly if her mother even knew that Kanan was there and if her father had already thrown him out an airlock. Just because Doriah had said that he was still alive didn’t mean that her cousin was telling the truth.

Just as her breathing was beginning to quicken in panic, her mother said reluctantly, “The Inquisitor is in the brig.”

Hera let her breath out in a gasp that ripped at her lungs, visions of a life without Kanan in it – something she remembered very well and didn’t need any prompting to relive – vanishing. Her mother blinked at this display of emotion, tightening her grip on Hera’s hand.

Relief made it hard for Hera to keep her voice steady. She spoke in Basic for the benefit of Sabine and Zeb, who were within earshot on the _Ghost_ ’s ramp. “And the boy Ezra Bridger?”

“He is with Fulcrum in the other hangar bay,” her father said, approaching from behind her mother. “Hera –”

She could have screamed in his face, and part of her wanted to. Instead, Hera pulled her hands free and stepped back, ignoring the agony in her mother’s eyes. “You know why I’m here,” she said. “Give me back my people.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to Kablob for stepping in as beta.
> 
> For new readers, I do daily progress reports over on Tumblr, under the tag "[daily fic snippet](http://bedlamsbard.tumblr.com/tagged/daily-fic-snippet)," if you want to keep track of what I'm working on or get a hint of what's happening in the next chapter or two.


	25. No Way Out

_Nine years ago_   
_Ryloth_

The stormtroopers were new.

The last time Alecto Syndulla had been on Ryloth, stormtroopers had still been limited to the areas of the planet claimed by the Imperial authorities; they hadn’t been a common sight in the streets of Lessu. Now they seemed to be everywhere she looked, patrolling the spaceport in pairs or trios and stopping passersby apparently at random. Alecto drew her scarf close across her face and ducked her head as she made her way across the too-open space that separated the hangar bay she had arrived in from the entrance to the spaceport, hoping that here, back on her homeworld, she would blend in with the crowd.

The dry air made the healing scar on her face itch, but the breeze that followed her through the open-roofed space brought tears to her eyes. Even in Lessu, crowded and miserable it was, it smelled like the desert that lay outside the city’s walls; it smelled like home. Two food stalls just inside the spaceport were frying strips of tebrin meat with noodles and making crepes for a line of hungry patrons who were either trying to catch offworld flights or had just returned; Alecto hesitated, her mouth watering at the familiar smells, before finally forcing herself to move on. She didn’t want to linger with all the stormtroopers around.

There were more stormtroopers on the street outside the spaceport. Alecto ignored them, making herself walk normally even though all her instincts said to run and hide. She kept the scarf over her face like a veil, knowing that only her eyes and the tips of her lekku were visible and glad that she had never given in and gotten them marked as a curiate. Lekku markings weren’t common; that would have stood out. One more green-skinned Twi’lek woman on the streets wouldn’t.

There was a cabstand in front of the spaceport, though there were fewer cabs here than there had been two years ago. Alecto weighed the dwindling credits in her pocket against staying in the open for the time it would take to walk to her destination, then started towards the cabstand. She stepped into the first cab available, settling herself into the single-person seat as the Twi’lek pulling the pedicab picked up the handlebars and then glanced back at her.

“Where to?” he asked in Twi’leki.

_The Court of Seven Fountains_ was on the tip of her tongue, but she wasn’t foolish enough to go to the townhouse when she didn’t know what the situation in the city was. Instead, she said, “The Court of the Horned Queen, in the Salt-Pan Quarter.”

The other Twi’lek nodded and settled himself in the harness that connected him to the cab. Alecto settled back as he began to run, finally releasing the scarf from across her face. She resisted the urge to scratch at her new scar and looked around at the streets they passed instead, picking out the differences from the last time she had been in Lessu. It seemed like a lifetime ago.

The superficial differences were less than she had expected, though she could see carbon scoring on some of the buildings, places where blaster bolts had chipped walls or roofs. There were fewer people on the streets than she remembered, and more stormtroopers.

The Court of the Horned Queen, despite its grand name, was a rundown court in one of the former industrial areas of the city. Water trickled slowly from the fountain it had been named for, though the statue itself was so battered as to be nearly unrecognizable except for the broken stubs of horns extending from the queen’s headpiece. The fountain keeper sitting on the chipped rim was a little girl with light purple skin, playing with a pair of battered tooka dolls but keeping a wary eye out for anyone trying to use the fountain without dropping credits into the clay bowl at her side. The other dwellers of the court squatted or stood in the shade of the awning that ran all around the court, working at looms leaning against the walls or grinding meal in big stone mortars. Others perched on the stone balconies of the buildings that rose up around the courtyard, many of which had lines of laundry strung between them, shading the courtyard further.

The arrival of the cab elicited little attention. Alecto stepped out and dug a few credits from her pocket to hand to the cab-puller, then drew the scarf back across her face and started across the courtyard towards the dark cave of a doorway. Rickety stacks of pottery bracketed it and just inside Alecto saw more shelves filled with pots, plates, and clay lamps, some glazed and some unglazed. As she stepped inside, she heard the sound of a pottery wheel and cleared her throat to get the potter’s attention.

The sound of the wheel stopped. A moment later a red-skinned Twi’lek woman emerged from the back room, stripped to breastband and slit skirt in the heat. She wiped clay off her hands on her apron and eyed Alecto doubtfully. “You want to buy something?”

“I’m here about the white figure ware set,” Alecto said, hoping she remembered the code phrase correctly.

The potter arched tattooed eyebrows, giving her a second look. “I think I’ve got one in the back. Come with me.”

Alecto followed her into the back room, past the potter’s wheel and into the stifling heat of the workshop beyond it, where a clay oven dominated one wall. On the opposite side of the room a gray-striped tooka was napping on an unmade pallet bed. It flicked an ear as the two women came in, its tail lashing in its sleep.

The potter shut the door behind her and turned towards Alecto just as Alecto unwound the scarf from around her face. Her eyes went wide in recognition and she took three quick steps forward to grasp Alecto’s hands, saying, “Syndulla –”

Alecto was never going to get used to that, even after being married to the clan head for the better part of two decades. “I’m looking for my husband,” she said. “I’ve been offworld, I didn’t want to go to the house without knowing that he was there.” Or if the house was still standing, or if Cham was even still alive –

“I’ve heard rumors about the colony –” the potter began, then saw the look on Alecto’s face and didn’t finish the thought. “The Syndulla is in the city,” she said instead. “The Curia has been dissolved, but some of the electors have been petitioning the Imperial governor to have it reinstated.” Her lip curled a little at the mention of Moff Delian Mors, for which Alecto couldn’t blame her. She had met the woman on one occasion back before everything had gone to hell in a handbasket, and hadn’t been impressed.

“So he’s at the house,” Alecto said out loud. “Or he will be later.” The Salt-Pan Quarter was nowhere near the Garden District, where all the homes of the nobility were; she didn’t like the idea of spending that much time in the open to walk there. It hadn’t been long; perhaps the cab was still close enough for her to catch up to. There weren’t likely to be any others for hire in this part of town.

She turned back to the potter. “Will you let me stay here until after dark? It should be easier to move around then –”

The potter shook her head, her lekku swaying. “There’s a curfew; you’ll be arrested. I’ll have my nephew take you over in his cart. He makes deliveries in the Garden District sometimes, so the stormtroopers there know him.”

Alecto started to protest that that wasn’t necessary, but knew that otherwise it would be a long walk, maybe a dangerous one if there were bounties on her posted around the city. She just said, “Thank you.”

The potter nodded. “Stay here. I’ll find him.” She hesitated for a moment, standing back on one foot, and added, “Do you need anything? Food, drink –”

“A little water, if it’s not too much trouble,” Alecto said. It struck her suddenly that if Cham was in the townhouse, then she could be eating at her own table in a few hours. It was an oddly jarring thought.

“Of course,” the potter said. She ducked out of the room; Alecto heard her calling for the little girl who served as fountain keeper.

It was the girl who came in a moment later, carefully carrying a clay cup brimming with water. She passed it solemnly to Alecto, eyeing her with curiosity, and said, “I’m Niale. Are you one of my mama’s friends?”

“Something like that.”

The water was cold enough to hurt her teeth, coming up as it was from the wells deep within the mountain. Alecto drank it slowly as the girl slipped out of the workshop, sitting down on the pallet bed as the tooka sat up and came over to investigate her, its paws light on her thigh. Alecto scratched it under the chin, listening to it purr, and set the cup down on the floor when she had finished it.

The potter returned with a scrawny boy no older than Hera, who looked shyly at Alecto and wouldn’t meet her eyes. He took Alecto up on the seat of his cart, which was drawn by a droid that looked like it had already been ancient when the Clone War had come to Ryloth. As cover for their passage a pair of elaborately painted vases had been packed carefully into the back.

Despite the droid’s age, their passage through the city’s winding, narrow streets was smooth. Alecto kept her scarf wrapped close about her face, watching the stormtroopers who were walking their patrols. Once a pair of V-wings shot by overhead, making Alecto tense in memory of the bombs that had been dropped on the colony. But no one else in the street seemed bothered by their passage, and Alecto forced herself to relax, folding a hand over the edge of the cart to brace herself.

The streets climbed upwards along the mountain, the buildings growing finer and more elaborate as they went. Flowering vines climbed up white walls as they entered the Garden District, where the curiate and higher rank patrician families kept their townhouses, and everywhere Alecto could hear the sound of running water – always a sign of wealth on Ryloth. Open doors revealed atria with decorated with fountains and painted walls, showing straight through to the gardens in the backs of the houses.

Even here there were stormtroopers, moving around the streets in groups of three or four. Twice they stopped the cart, but the presence of the vases in the back reassured them of their good intentions, and they were allowed to pass unmolested.

The Syndulla townhouse took up the entirety of the Court of Seven Fountains, only three of which were visible from the street as the cart turned into it. Alecto swung out of the cart before the boy could climb out to hand her down, looking at the house’s closed doors.

“Will you be all right?” the boy asked shyly.

“Yes.” She blinked and looked back at him, repeating, “Yes. Thank you.”

He nodded at her and turned the cart around to leave the court. Alecto made her way to the doors, fighting down a surge of fear that there would be a squadron of stormtroopers behind them, waiting for her to walk in. The Empire had known enough to come after the colony; it was unthinkable that they wouldn’t be watching the Syndulla townhouse.

Alecto took a deep breath and laid her hand on the nearly invisible control panel by the door, hoping that they hadn’t been recoded to lock her out. But the doors slid open in response and she stepped inside, her boot heels clicking on the tiled floor of the vestibule as she passed through the short, narrow corridor into the atrium, which was dominated by the fountain at the center. It spilled water into a pool whose edge Alecto skirted, light gleaming off the colored tiles lining its floor. The household gods watched her passage from their niche in the wall; Alecto could smell fresh incense from that morning’s offering.

She could hear the murmur of voices from somewhere else in the house and followed the sound to Cham’s private study – not the public one on the far side of the atrium where he greeted clients, but the one that opened out to the water garden, an expensive indulgence laid in by some ancestor of Cham’s.

The last time Alecto had been here, Hera had been with her.

She had to stop and lean against the wall, so intense was her rage. While she had been rotting in an Imperial cell and Hera was gone, her baby was _gone_ , Cham had been here in the home of his ancestors, with his tiled floors and brightly painted walls, and the water that was worth more than diamonds on Ryloth like an afterthought to his dreams. People had died – their _family_ had died – and Cham had been here in this jeweled wonder, untouched by the Empire’s vengeance. The Empire had dragged her daughter screaming from her arms and Cham had been here, sleeping in his own bed.

If Cham had been there in the hallway with her right then, Alecto might have strangled him.

After a moment her fury passed and Alecto pushed herself off the wall, continuing down the corridor towards the study. The door was open, and as she stepped inside she saw Cham standing with his back to her, looking at the hologram of what looked like a Separatist frigate. With him were his friend Gobi Glie, his cousin Themarsa, and Alecto’s sister Clotho.

She stood for a moment watching them, listening to Cham say, “– we’ll need at least a skeleton crew for the pickup –”

She said, “Cham.”

He swung around, his eyes widening, and crossed the room in a few quick steps, Clotho just behind him. Until now, Alecto hadn’t been certain whether she would kiss him or kill him when she saw him again, but instead she just froze, neither leaning into his embrace nor pulling away.

“Alecto,” he said, his voice rough and his arms tight around her. She finally breathed out, shutting her eyes against his next words. “Where’s Hera? Where’s our daughter?”

*

_Present day_

“I’m not going to stay,” Hera said.

It was the first time she had spoken since they had left the hangar. Alecto flicked a sideways glance at Cham, her expression anxious. Cham just looked back at her, uncertain how to respond even though Hera’s words weren’t exactly a surprise.

If their daughter was aware of the exchange, she made no indication of it. Hera was standing with her back to them, staring determinedly at one of the tapestries on the wall of Cham’s stateroom. Like all the others, it had previously hung in his office back at the villa on Ryloth, so she had seen it many times before. Even though the story it depicted had always been one of Hera’s favorites, he doubted that she was as entranced with it as she pretended to be.

“We can talk about that,” Cham said when it became clear that Alecto was waiting for him to respond.

Hera’s lekku twitched, but not in any way that Cham could interpret. “About what? There’s nothing here for me.”

“Your family is here,” Alecto said. “Baby –”

“You’re not my family,” Hera snapped. “You’re just the people who put my family, my real family, in a cage to bring me here. I’m leaving as soon as I get him back.”

Cham felt a muscle in his jaw twitch, not that it wasn’t anything that he hadn’t expected. Alecto, however, just looked badly hurt, as though Hera had struck her. “That Inquisitor made you –”

Hera turned with her mother’s sudden, blinding fury written on her face. “It’s not because of him! I’m twenty-four years old and an Imperial officer; give me the dignity of at least pretending you think I can make my own decisions.” She paused, breathing hard, and then corrected herself, her voice like shattered stone. “I _was_ an Imperial officer.”

Cham glanced at his wife, who just looked stunned. Her lips moved silently, but he couldn’t tell what she was saying.

Hera took a shaky breath, her lekku trembling. “Please,” she said, her accent threatening to bleed through on the edges of the consonants; they had been speaking in Basic rather than Twi’leki. “Please, I know you don’t – but can you try to believe that I know my own mind? I’m not a child. I haven’t been one since the colony. But you keep treating me like one.”

Cham took a breath of his own. “All right,” he said. “All right, Hera. We’ll try.”

She swallowed, then said with obvious effort, “Thank you.”

They were all three of them silent, Hera still looking away and Alecto standing with her fists clenched, leaning forward a little like she was barely keeping herself from running to their daughter and taking Hera in her arms. Cham mostly felt tired, almost too tired to feel anything other than relief that Hera was here after all. He hadn’t been certain – but she had come.

It didn’t change the fact that he had one of Neso’s teams doing as discreet a security sweep as they could manage on her ship, because Hera might have been his daughter, but she had still been an Imperial officer. This wouldn’t be the first time that the ISB had faked a desertion to try and place a spy with one rebel group or another. He had never heard of it being done with a nonhuman before, but there was a first time for everything.

_Not Hera_ , Cham prayed silently to whatever gods might be listening. _Let this be what it seems and not an Imperial trick. Don’t make me have to kill my daughter._

“Well –” Hera said eventually. “I’m here. Will you – will you give him back to me?”

Alecto glanced at Cham, looking as desperate as Hera sounded. Cham bit his lip.

When he didn’t respond, Hera said uneasily, “You promised.”

“I promised nothing,” Cham said slowly. “You never gave me a chance to speak.” He swallowed, picking his next words carefully. “Hera – daughter – you are asking me to put an Imperial Inquisitor back in the galaxy, to walk around free without even the Emperor’s hand on his leash –”

Hera flinched like he had slapped her. “He’s not a wild animal. You must have figured that out; by now I’m sure you’ve interrogated him, even if you didn’t try to have a civil conversation with him.” She wetted her lips, then added, “You sound like Agent Beneke. He never thought that Kanan was a person either.” Her gaze fixed on Cham’s, she said, “If you bothered to talk to him before you murdered him, then you would know that.”

Cham breathed in. “The subject did not come up,” he said, managing to keep his voice even. “I know you’re angry, Hera, I understand that –”

“Angry?” Hera repeated. “Angry doesn’t begin to cover it. Do you have any idea what I’ve lost because of you? My career, my crew’s careers, _Kanan_ –” She stopped, breathing hard, then raised her gaze to him. “I’ve lost everything I’ve spent the past ten years of my life working towards. You did that.”

“It was the Empire that did that to you, not us,” Alecto said, stepping forward with her hands out. “Baby, you have to know that.”

“No.” Hera shook her head, her eyes glittering. She looked at her mother’s outstretched hands, then away. “Everything in my life has gone wrong since you came to Thyferra. This is the second time I’ve lost everything because of you. I spent a decade putting it back together last time. And now it’s gone. You’ve taken everything. Again. I don’t know why I’m surprised that the one time you can give something back to me you won’t do it.”

*

Kanan’s cell boasted a narrow cot, a toilet that folded into the wall, and a sink barely large enough for him to fit one hand into. The cot alone made it better than some of the other prison cells he had spent time in.

There were three other cells in the brig, all of them empty at the moment but as far as he could tell, identical to this one. The brig clearly wasn’t the ship’s original one; this had probably been meant to hold beings who got drunk or started fights, not prisoners of war. Just by looking at the control panel outside the cell opposite his, Kanan was pretty certain he could use the Force to shut down the ray shield; after that it would be a simple matter of opening the blast doors and taking care of the guards outside, which he could probably do in his sleep. After that –

Kanan had studied Separatist warships when he had still been at the Jedi Temple, but since his field experience in the war had been limited to three ground deployments and an attempted homicide, this was the first time he had ever been on one. Even without of his hazy memory of the holograms he had studied, however, he could tell that the _Forlorn Hope_ had been heavily altered from its original configuration. For one, it had never been meant to carry large numbers of organics; its life support systems must have been completely replaced, as well as numerous other systems to make it habitable for however many thousands of Twi’leks now called it home. He had been led down here by what had seemed to him like a roundabout route, probably to avoid civilian areas of the ship; he was pretty sure that he could find his way back to the hangar where Ahsoka had parked the _Aegis_. If the _Forlorn Hope_ was configured like most warships – and there were only so many ways to design one – there would be at least one more hangar on the ship’s opposite side as well. Stealing a small starship was child’s play.

Except that would leave Ezra here on his own. And would almost certainly confirm the worst suspicions of Hera’s parents, which for once Kanan didn’t feel like doing.

He groaned and threw an arm up to cover his eyes. After Hera’s mother had left, he had tried to go back to his meditations, but hadn’t been able to concentrate enough to do so. In a way, he wasn’t surprised; after almost a decade away he had forced himself back into meditation when he had been at the Crucible. On Mustafar it had always been easy, shockingly so; dark side or not, the vergence there lay so close to the Force that Kanan had sometimes walked half in trance even without meaning to. It had been the Hunter who dragged him back to the waking world on the few occasions when Kanan had just considered giving himself up to the Force – going into trance and never coming out. Back at the Temple it had been considered an honor for Jedi to die that way, even if Caleb had always found the idea creepy.

_Oh, blast, I’m going to have to teach Ezra how to meditate. Assuming I live that long._

He still wasn’t counting out the possibility that one of Hera’s relatives was going to come in here with a blaster pistol and blow his brains out.

As if summoned by the thought, he heard the blast doors to the brig slide open. There was a murmur of uneasy conversation from the guards in the hallway outside, though Kanan wasn’t quite certain whether he actually heard it or if it was only a stray thought carried along by the Force.

He kept his eyes shut as bootsteps rang on the metal deck. A woman, from the tread, but not Alecto Syndulla or Ahsoka Tano. At least it wasn’t Cham or Doriah Syndulla, back for another round of interrogation or a laser blast to the head.

The steps came to a stop in front of his cell. Kanan stayed where he was, waiting to see what she would do without a response to her presence. Silence stretched out between them for a few moments, until she said abruptly, “Who are you?”

Kanan moved his arm away from his eyes and turned his head to study her through the ray shield. She was a broad-shouldered Twi’lek woman with blue skin and a scar through her lip; her expression was somewhere between curious and hostile.

“I’m Kanan,” he said. “Who are you?”

“Mishaan Secura,” she said. “Captain of the _Forlorn Hope_.”

“I thought this was Cham Syndulla’s boat.”

A small line knit between her brows. “I’m the captain,” she said. “You arrived here with that Togruta, didn’t you? In the middle of the night cycle, when everyone decent was sleeping.”

“I think the timing was an accident,” Kanan said. He pushed himself upright into a seated position, deciding that looking at her sideways was giving him a headache. “What’s it to you?”

Captain Secura didn’t answer that, looking him up and down instead. “What are you doing in this cell? I was under the impression that Fulcrum was one of the Syndulla’s allies.”

Kanan spread his empty hands in response. “He doesn’t like me very much.”

“And why is that?”

“It must be my winning personality.”

She curled her lip, the scar making the expression odd. “I find that hard to believe.”

“Aww, sweetheart –”

“I think I know the Syndulla a little better than you do, human.”

She said “human” like a curse word. It wasn’t the first time Kanan had heard it said that way, but it had been a while since the last time; for obvious reasons that insult didn’t crop up much in the Imperial service. It did turn up occasionally in the nonhuman-dominated Inquisition.

He shrugged. “Probably. I’ve only met the guy once.”

“So then why are you here?”

Kanan stared at her for a long moment, trying to work out what her game was, but his head hurt and he was too angry to think clearly ( _bad, bad, not what a Jedi would do_ ), so he finally said, “I’m a friend of his daughter.”

Captain Secura’s hand dropped to the blaster holstered at her side. “You’re an Imperial.”

Kanan raised his eyebrows. “Do I look like an Imperial?”

“You’re a human.” She put the hand that wasn’t on the blaster into one of the pouches on her belt, pulling out a palm-sized holoprojector. Kanan blinked at her, confused, until she turned it on and Hera’s wanted holo appeared. Secura flicked past it to the next one in the sequence, which happened to be his. Kanan sighed.

“I thought you looked familiar,” she said. “So you’re an Imperial deserter.”

“Yeah,” Kanan said. “I’m an Imperial deserter.”

“Imperial Security Bureau, like Hera Syndulla?”

“More or less.”

“Which is it?” Captain Secura asked. “More or less? From what I know about the Empire, it’s a yes or no question.”

Kanan shrugged. “I’m not anything anymore. That’s the point of deserting.”

She turned the holoprojector off and put it away. “So you’re Imperial black ops,” she said softly and thoughtfully. “On my ship. One of the Emperor’s dogs.”

Kanan felt the Force flicker at his fingertips, wariness from years in the Crucible telling him that now was the time to make a move. This wasn’t the Crucible, though, even if she was more right about that than she knew.

“What does the Syndulla want with you?” she said abruptly. “Does he mean to move openly against the Empire?”

“Lady, I have no idea what Cham Syndulla wants,” Kanan said tiredly, though it wasn’t as if Cham had actually been particularly subtle about what he wanted. If Mishaan Secura didn’t know, then Kanan didn’t feel like it was his business to tell her. “If you haven’t noticed, we’re not exactly close friends.” He gestured at the cell walls surrounding him.

“No,” Captain Secura said, returning her hand to her blaster. “I wouldn’t think so. But he does want something from you.” She stroked a thumb over the worn bantha leather on her blaster grip, her gaze fixed on him. “Hera Syndulla arrived on this ship less than an hour ago.”

Kanan raised his head, startled; he hadn’t sensed her arrival in the Force. Then again, he had been so distracted that Darth Vader could have landed and he probably wouldn’t have noticed.

Her gaze fixed on him, Captain Secura said, “Do you know how this fleet came to be? The fleet, not the movement.”

“I’ve read the ISB files,” Kanan said.

“You’re an Imperial officer,” Captain Secura said. “You’ve been to Imperial-occupied planets – fought on them, probably.” Her lip curled. “Killed people who wanted nothing more than to live free of Palpatine’s bile.”

“Only when they tried to kill me first,” Kanan said.

She arched her eyebrows, but said, “Ryloth is lost to us. Our world, our home, no longer exists. Too many of our people found it easier to give up and bend the knee to the Emperor than fight for our freedom and the freedom of our children. That’s no way to live.”

“Isn’t it?” Kanan said softly. “You can’t fight forever.”

“No,” Captain Secura agreed. “But only a coward is content to live their life on their knees.” She swept a hand out to encompass the ship around them. “Out here we are free. We have no spice for the Empire to steal, no land for them to ravage; we answer to no laws but our own. We’re free, and we’re safe –”

“You’re the last thing from either,” Kanan said. He unfolded himself to his full height, watching Captain Secura tilt her head back to keep her gaze fixed on him. “You just changed prisons. Yeah, no one can burn your house down around you, but you don’t have much of a house left, either. You might not be tied to Ryloth anymore, but you still need food, water, supplies that you can’t manufacture on your ships. And the Empire knows where to find you.”

“They won’t without a reason –”

“Your existence is a reason,” Kanan said. “Do you want to know what it looks like from the other side, Captain Secura? I’ll tell you. The Rebellion is growing. Whether it’s organized or not, it’s been spreading from planet to planet and system to system. Just as soon as the Empire stamps down one cell, another one appears somewhere else. They’ve let Free Ryloth be the past few years because you’ve been quiet, but Free Ryloth is the largest and most organized rebel cell in the galaxy. They can’t let that rest any longer. Sooner rather than later they’re going to come for you because as long as you’re out here, you’re a threat to them.”

“We are _not_ rebels!” Captain Secura snapped. “We are free men and women, not terrorists –”

“You think the Empire cares what you call yourselves?” Kanan demanded. “That’s semantics. You’ve defied them for a decade. For that, they can’t let you live.”

She shook her head. “Not _us_ ,” she said. She tapped a finger absently against her blaster grip again, her gaze fixed on him, then drew the blaster.

Kanan didn’t flinch. “You want to shoot me,” he said, “you’re going to have to drop the ray shield to do it. You think you can pull that trigger faster than I can get to you?”

“You give yourself too much credit, Imperial.”

“No. You don’t give me enough.”

He watched her finger flex against the trigger, her gaze flickering towards the control panel. Finally, she spat, “Your presence here pollutes this ship,” and holstered the weapon. She left without another word, her bootsteps hard against the deck.

*

“So this is what the other side looks like, huh?” Sabine said. “Not really what I expected.”

Despite the odd hour of the night, there were still people in the hangar, mostly mechanics and pilots working on their starfighters, as well as the guards watching the _Ghost_ from a safe distance and pretending they weren’t doing so. There was also a scatter of people who didn’t seem to be doing anything in particular, whom Sabine was guessing were a mix of curious bystanders and friends of the pilots who had shown up to keep them company. It was oddly domestic – or at least, domestic by Mandalorian standards, reminding Sabine uneasily of the Gatherings she had attended before she had gone to the Academy, where various clans and houses got together to alternately celebrate and fight to the death. She hadn’t seen much of either here, but something about the atmosphere felt the same.

Zeb glanced over at her. “What exactly were you expecting?” he inquired.

They were sitting on the _Ghost_ ’s ramp, waiting for Hera to come back – preferably with Kanan and Ezra, otherwise Sabine thought they were going to be here a while. As it was, she thought they were going to be here a while anyway, since everything that she had ever heard about Cham Syndulla suggested that he wouldn’t give up so easily. Not with his own blood at stake.

Of course, that was the Mandalorian in Sabine talking, but she didn’t see any particular reason a Twi’lek would do differently.

She stretched her legs out and leaned back on her elbows, the metal of her pads scraping against the deck. _Going to have to redo that paint job_ , she thought idly, but that was an idea she had been turning over since Mustafar. Since before, really, it had been time for a change long before all this had started. “I don’t know,” she said in response to Zeb’s question. “Something messier, I guess? More desperate. This is all pretty normal.”

She shifted to scratch at her chin and added thoughtfully, “You know how the Empire talks about the rebels. And I guess the cells we’ve seen – I’ve seen,” she corrected herself; Zeb had been with the _Ghost_ longer than she had, and her training back on Mandalore hadn’t had much to do with the rebels, “– a lot of them have been pretty ragged. But these guys are organized. During the battle, they had a whole system for jumping away before the task force could close in on them – you saw that they sent fighters out before any of the ships went?”

“Yeah, I saw.”

“It has been, what, nine years?” Sabine said, thinking out loud. “If they weren’t organized they wouldn’t have lasted this long.” Like Death Watch. Like the rumored other rebel cells that no one had ever been able to nail down, the ones whose discovery would have made any ISB agent’s career. Oh, the _cells_ existed. What no one knew for sure was whether there was some sort of central command. Sabine figured that there had to be something, because a lot of the cells had equipment that there was no way they afford on their own, but the problem was that no one knew where that money was coming from. Cham Syndulla was independently wealthy and had been funding the Free Ryloth fleet out of pocket for years – there was a special task force in the ISB dedicated solely to finding out his financials – but she doubted that he was paying for anyone else.

“You ever think about it?” she asked Zeb suddenly. “After Lasan, I mean. Joining the rebels?”

He slanted a sideways glance at her, his ears flattening. “Thought about a lot of things,” he said, and then, more slowly, “There didn’t seem much point. My world…Lasan was an entire planet and it couldn’t stand up to the Empire. The Royal Family, the Honor Guard, our soldiers, our people…all of them died. How could anyone else hope to have a chance? Let alone these…rebels.” His gaze encompassed the hangar with its battered, decades-old starfighters.

“At least your people fought,” Sabine muttered, sitting up and scraping at some loose paint on her kneepads with the edge of her fingernail. She didn’t think she had spoken loudly enough for Zeb to hear her, but he turned towards her anyway, one brow going up.

“What about you?”

“What, in the hot minute between trying to blow up the Imperial Academy on Mandalore and getting captured by Kanan and Hera? I didn’t exactly have time.”

“Point taken.”

“You blew up the Imperial Academy?” said a shocked-sounding female voice with a faint Rylothean accent. “Aren’t you an Imperial?”

Sabine looked up to see a very pretty Twi’lek girl about her own age standing at the foot of the _Ghost_ ’s ramp. She had pink skin and bright blue eyes; her lekku, bare shoulders, and arms were all decorated with an elaborate spiral and dot pattern that made Sabine’s fingers itch for her sketch pad. It wasn’t the same as Hera’s, but there was something about it that suggested a similar origin.

“I wasn’t very good at it,” Sabine said. “And we’re not Imperials anymore, anyway. Who are you?”

“I’m Xiaan Syndulla, I’m Hera’s cousin.” She eyed them with interest and a certain amount of wariness; Sabine noticed that the guards and a few of the pilots were watching more closely than they had before, as if made uneasy by the girl’s presence so close to the outsiders.

_Probably Zeb_ , Sabine decided after a moment’s thought; Lasats could be imposing that way. Sabine had left her helmet inside the _Ghost_ and was bareheaded, suspecting that despite her Mandalorian armor her youth would still make her look relatively harmless. Normally that wasn’t a good thing, but under the circumstances…

Well, they were outnumbered, to say the least. And she still didn’t know where Kanan or Ezra were, even if Hera had gone off with her parents.

“I’m Sabine. This is Zeb, and that’s Chopper.” She jerked a thumb over her shoulder at the droid, who had parked himself in the _Ghost_ ’s entrance and was muttering to himself at irregular intervals.

The corner of Xiaan’s mouth lifted. “I remember Chopper,” she said. “A little. I was very young when the colony was destroyed.” She smiled shyly as Chopper spotted her and rolled down the ramp, Sabine dodging sideways just in time to avoid getting hit. He said something to Xiaan in his almost unintelligible binary as she touched his dome.

Her spiral markings – Sabine was pretty sure they were tattoos – went up over her wrists to culminate on the backs of her hands. Sabine wanted a better look, but there was no polite way to ask, and she settled for tilting her head as inconspicuously as possible to try and fix the pattern in her mind so she could draw it later.

“So Hera had Chopper before she became an Imperial?” Zeb said doubtfully. “I know he’s not exactly Imp issue, but –” He looked at Sabine and shrugged, flipping an ear. “Just assumed she’d picked him up somewhere, I guess. She picked up all of us.”

“She pulled him out of a crashed Y-wing during the Clone Wars and rebuilt him, or at least that’s the story. I wasn’t born then,” Xiaan said, patting Chopper’s dome again. “So I guess in a way she did. Pick him up, I mean.” She hesitated, watching them, and then added shyly, “Hera’s in with Uncle Cham and Auntie Alecto right now. I wanted to see –” She stumbled for a moment over the words, looking young and nervous. “I’m not supposed to be here,” she finished. “But I wanted to see where Hera…lived. She used to be my favorite cousin when I was little.”

Sabine snapped her fingers suddenly. “That’s where I know your voice. You’re the one who broke into our comm channel.”

Xiaan looked distressed. She stood back on one heel, rubbing her hands together – long narrow fingers like Hera’s, Sabine noted automatically, with close-bitten nails – and said, “I didn’t mean – I didn’t think – I just wanted her to come back. I didn’t mean to get her in trouble.”

“You nearly got her dead,” Zeb pointed out, and Xiaan flinched away from the words.

“All the others are gone,” she said eventually, her voice low. “They’re all gone, or – or dead. I just wanted my cousin back.”

*

“Hera, baby, come with me.”

Hera didn’t even look at her mother. She was so angry that it hurt to breathe, her fury centered in her throat and in the space behind her eyes, a headache throbbing in time with each shallow breath that was all she could manage right now. “I’m not going anywhere with you.”

“We’re just going to my stateroom next door,” Alecto said. “We’re just going to talk, baby.”

She stretched a tentative hand out; Hera sidestepped it. Her father registered the dismissal, his brows drawing together as he shot a questioning look at her mother.

“I don’t want to talk to you,” Hera said. Her arms were crossed over her chest so tightly that her shoulders ached. Her whole body was one giant knot; when she shifted she could feel the strain in her feet, running up through calves and knees and thighs to her hips and up along her spine, compressing into something that made her feel like she would shatter if she moved wrong.

She couldn’t remember the last time she had eaten or drank anything; she hadn’t slept since before they had arrived at the clearinghouse. Fear of the Empire’s revenge had crystallized into fear of her parents and what they might do – to her, to Kanan, to her crew. Hera hadn’t spent this much time afraid since she had been fourteen years old and crying herself to sleep every night in her prison cell.

Her mother glanced at her father, something passing silently between them, then Alecto said, “If you come with me, I’ll let you see the Inquisitor.”

Hera caught her breath. She finally looked at her mother, who watching her with desperate eyes, and said reluctantly, “All right.”

She followed her mother out into the corridor and into the next stateroom, leaving her father behind. She couldn’t help flinching as the door slid shut behind her, trying to cover up her reaction as she looked around at the room. Somehow she wasn’t surprised that her parents didn’t share a bedroom anymore; in those last weeks before her father had sent them away from Ryloth she knew her mother had taken to sleeping in one of the other suites.

Hera swallowed and turned to her mother. “What do you want to say?”

“I want to tell you how your aunt Seku died,” Alecto said.

Hera looked away. “I already know that. Agent Beneke told me. You escaped from the Spire on Stygeon Prime and Aunt Seku was killed.” _And you left me there._ The words were on the tip of her tongue, but Hera managed to stifle them; her mother knew what she had done.

“We weren’t on Stygeon Prime,” her mother said.

“That’s where the Spire is, so you had to be –”

“We were on Naraka,” her mother said swiftly before Hera could finish. “Not Stygeon Prime. Naraka. The prison is built into a cliff face; you have to make an aerial approach.”

Hera blinked. “I know, I’ve been there,” she said automatically. “Kanan and I had an op –” She shook her head. “You were on Stygeon Prime. Agent Beneke said so.”

“We were never on Stygeon Prime,” her mother repeated. “What that man told you was a lie.”

“He’s never lied to –” Hera hesitated on the words, unable to complete the sentence. She had never known Agent Beneke to knowingly lie to her outright, but there had been times when she had found out later that he had elided the truth. Though everyone in the ISB did that; it was part of the job.

“Why would _I_ lie to you?” Alecto said earnestly. She put a hand out as if to touch Hera, but Hera stepped back from her.

“Because you want me to stay,” Hera said. “Because you want me to – to forgive you for leaving –” She turned away, pressing the back of her hand to her mouth.

Ten years. It had been ten years; she should have been over this already. She had thought that she was over it.

“I didn’t leave you!” her mother said, her voice rising. “Hera, I swear, we were never on Stygeon Prime. I’ve seen the security footage from the Spire, I know what that man told you, and it was a lie. We were never there. Do you think that if I had been, if I had been in the same star system, never mind the same building, as you, that I would have ever left you behind?”

“Yes,” Hera said.

Her mother’s eyes went wide. “Hera –”

Hera shut her eyes, feeling her throat work silently before she made herself speak, keeping her voice quick and flat. “When I was fourteen years old, when I was locked in that box, I wanted you and Daddy more than anything else in the galaxy. Even after – after everything that Agent Beneke said to me, I still thought that you and Daddy would come for me, I thought – even when I was in the Academy, when I hated everyone around me because they thought I was an uppity tailhead slut – part of me still thought that you would come. But you never did. You let them take me and you _left me there_.”

She pressed her hands to her mouth, her shoulders shaking. “You let them take me,” she whispered. “And you left me there. What was I supposed to think? You never even tried to find me.”

“I tried!” Alecto cried. “ _We_ tried. We’ve spent years –”

“Well, you didn’t try hard enough!” Hera bit the side of her hand, trying to force her voice back to something resembling calm, but she couldn’t quite manage it. “I wasn’t hiding. I’ve always used my real name. You could have found me if you had really wanted to.”

“Do you think we didn’t want to?” her mother demanded. She took another step closer; Hera stepped back. “I’ve barely thought of anything else in ten years –”

“You can think about anything,” Hera spat. “But you never did it.” She shut her eyes. “And it’s too late now.”

*

It said something about how weird his life had gotten lately that Ezra was actually glad to see the _Ghost_ parked in the _Forlorn Hope_ ’s hangar bay, and even more relieved to see Sabine, Zeb, and Chopper perched on the ramp, along with a Twi’lek girl he didn’t know. He wasn’t actually sure that he _liked_ the feeling, since he was decidedly opposed to putting himself in any position where he was dependent on other people, except that was exactly what he had done back on Lothal. There wasn’t any way he could get out of it now.

Not that he wanted to. He thought. He was pretty sure, anyway, especially after Mustafar.

Zeb flicked an ear as he and Ahsoka approached, saying, “Hey, kid. Still alive, huh?”

“Stop sounding so surprised,” Ezra said. He detached himself from Ahsoka’s side and went up the ramp a few steps to sit down heavily between Zeb and Sabine, then blinked up at the Twi’lek girl. She was watching him warily – a slim, very pretty girl no taller than him with pink skin and elaborate tattoos. “Hi,” he said, belatedly making his voice warm. “I’m Ezra – Ezra Bridger.”

“Xiaan Syndulla,” she said. She looked at Ahsoka, taking a step back from the ramp, a little closer to Ahsoka than to them. Ezra felt a flicker of disappointment, but at this point he was used to getting rebuffed.

He saw Ahsoka register the girl’s retreat too, but she didn’t comment on it, just looked calmly at Zeb and Sabine and say, “I’m Ahsoka Tano. I’m –”

“Fulcrum,” Sabine said. “Right?”

“Right.”

Zeb and Sabine shared a glance; it was Zeb who said, “Yeah, we don’t have anything to say to you after what you did to Kanan and Hera. And the kid,” he added like an afterthought, ruffling a hand through Ezra’s hair. Ezra did his best to slap it aside, which Zeb dodged adroitly.

Ahsoka sighed. “I did what I thought was best at the time.”

“Yeah, I’m sure you think so.” Zeb levered himself to his feet, offering Ezra and Sabine both a hand up. Ezra didn’t see why they were getting up since he had just sat down, but wrapped his fingers around Zeb’s anyway and let himself be pulled upright. “People like you always do.”

“‘People like me’?” Ahsoka repeated.

“Fanatics,” Zeb said. “They’ve got them on the Imperial side, too. That’s how all my people ended up dead. The only difference between them and you rebels is the hardware.”

He put a hand on Ezra’s shoulder and the other on Sabine’s, steering them inside the _Ghost_. Chopper chortled something that sounded rude to Ahsoka and a shocked-looking Xiaan and followed them inside, the ramp folding up behind them as Zeb hit the control.

As soon as it was closed, Zeb turned Ezra to face him and said, his voice serious, “You all right, kid? They do anything to you?”

Ezra shook his head. “Like what?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Sabine said, crossing her arms over her chest and leaning back against the ladder that led up into the rest of the ship. “The word ‘interrogation’ springs to mind. Kanan wasn’t looking too good in that hologram, you know.”

“No, I don’t,” Ezra said, scratching at the base of his hairline. “They didn’t let me see him after they hauled him off. I went looking, but I didn’t get very far.” He shoved his hands into his pockets and added, “I don’t think any of the Twi’leks were interested in me – at least, none of them came to talk to me. It’s not like I know anything, anyway.”

Zeb frowned. “What about Her Nibs out there?”

Ezra shrugged. “She mostly just asked me about Kanan.”

“And?”

He shrugged again. “You do realize I don’t actually know you guys very well, right? And it’s not like I really know anything.”

“True,” Sabine said. She looked at Zeb. “You think that this was all about getting Hera back here?”

His ears went flat, but he jerked a thumb towards the door. “Not for her,” he said.

*

Doriah was with the Twi’lek guards on duty outside of the Forlorn Hope’s brig, leaning back against the wall and watching the sabacc game going on between the others. He looked up as Hera and her mother came down the corridor, then pushed away from the wall and came to meet them.

“Hey,” he said gently to Hera, putting a hand out to rest on her shoulder. “How are you doing?”

“I’m tired,” Hera told him, but she turned her head so that he could brush a kiss across her cheek. “You haven’t shot him yet, have you?”

“Not yet.” Doriah squeezed her shoulder, then let go and turned towards Alecto. “Auntie –”

She looked at him worriedly. “What did he do?”

Doriah shook his head. “Not him. Captain Secura showed up. She went in, talked to him – I don’t know about what; she turned off the security cameras. They’re both still breathing, anyway.”

“Mishaan Secura is the ship’s captain,” Alecto said, presumably for Hera’s benefit.

“I know, I’ve read the ISB files on the fleet,” Hera told her wearily. “What does she want with Kanan?”

“I have no idea,” her mother said. “Did you tell your uncle already?” she added to Doriah.

He nodded. “I commed him right after she left. She didn’t look happy, if that matters at all.”

Hera didn’t know or care enough about fleet politics to have any idea if it did. It had been clear from the ISB files that no one at the Bureau had understand the significance of a Secura having a command position on a Syndulla ship – the significance being that that was virtually unheard of in the normal course of things. The resistance – first against the Separatists, then the Empire – had encompassed most of the planet, but the fleet had divided itself along traditional clan lines. That a patrician from another clan – a loyalist clan at that – held a ranking position amongst the Syndullas would have set off alarm bells throughout the Bureau if anyone other than Hera had realized how odd it was.

Hera couldn’t bring herself to care. “I want to see Kanan,” she said.

Doriah grimaced. “You don’t have to go in there, Hera,” he said.

“I don’t have to do a lot of things, and one of them is be here,” Hera said. She crossed her arms over her chest, aware of the other Twi’leks in the corridor – they had abandoned their sabacc game to eavesdrop, not terribly inconspicuously. Hera didn’t have the faintest idea who any of them were, though on this ship the chances were high she was related to at least one of them. “I want to see him.”

She stopped herself from adding childishly, _Mama_ said _I could!_ , but the words were on the tip of her tongue anyway, and from their expressions both her mother and Doriah knew it. Doriah looked at her mother, who nodded a little, her shoulders drooping.

“Do you want me to go in there with you, baby?” she asked.

Hera looked at her blankly. “Why would I want that?”

Her mother bit her lip. “When you’re done – I can have a stateroom made up for you, so you can –”

“I’ll sleep on my ship,” Hera said flatly. Sabine had commed to let her know that Fulcrum had returned Ezra to them, so at least she knew the _Ghost_ was still there and no one had blown it up. Yet.

Her mother put a hand on her arm. “If you need anything –”

“What I need is my partner,” Hera said, stepping away from her for what felt like the thousandth time that night. For the thousandth time she saw distress cross her mother’s face, but Alecto kept trying, as if hoping she could get through to Hera by sheer repetition.

Doriah’s gaze flicked between them. “I’ll stay with her, Auntie.”

“I don’t need to be babysat or chaperoned,” Hera snapped.

“You might let him out,” Doriah said.

Hera couldn’t come up with an argument for that, so she didn’t say anything.

Carefully, her mother took her shoulders between her hands. Hera tried to step back again, but this time her mother held her in place. She brushed a kiss lightly over Hera’s forehead and said, “I need to speak with your father, but if you need anything, _anything_ –”

“I need you to let my partner out of prison.”

“– except that.” Alecto kissed her again. “I am so glad you’re here, baby.”

“Mother…” Hera didn’t know what to say in response. She bit her lip, then finally finished, “I’ll comm you if I need anything.”

Her mother accepted that with a pained expression, then pressed another kiss to Hera’s cheek and turned away. She looked back after a few steps, as though unable to bear being separated for even that long; Hera glanced aside.

Doriah put an arm around her shoulders. “You okay?” he asked her quietly.

“I don’t want to be here.”

“Yeah, I got that.” He kissed the side of her forehead, beneath the edge of her flight cap. “But I’m glad you are. What happened? The last time I saw you –”

“Do you know that no one else has asked me that?” Hera said softly. “Not Daddy, not Mama. They just accepted that naturally I’d be here instead of there as soon as soon as I realized it was an option, never mind that they had to kidnap someone to get me here.”

“You know that they weren’t the ones who brought him in, right? That was Fulcrum. It’s not Cham’s style,” Doriah said. “So what did happen?”

Hera glanced up at him. “Kanan was arrested.”

His gaze shot towards the brig doors. “The –”

“The Inquisitor, yes. He was arrested because he came after me when Agent Kallus – after what happened on the _Relentless_ , and I couldn’t…” Hera licked her lips. “The first time he was arrested, five years ago, the Crucible tried to carve his soul out. They didn’t succeed, but – but they came close. I couldn’t let that happen again. I just couldn’t. Especially because they probably would have killed him this time.”

Doriah’s mouth went tight. “All this for him?”

“No,” Hera said. “Not just for him.” There were a lot of other things Hera could have – maybe should have – said, but instead she just looked towards the blast doors and said, “I need to see him, Doriah.”

He pulled away from her so that he could put his hands on her shoulders, studying her face with a worried expression. “Are you sure? Are you really sure, I mean? You don’t have to have anything to do with him again if you don’t want to – if he did something to you to make you –”

“I’m an adult; I can make my own decisions,” Hera said tiredly. “He’s my partner and my lover and if you’re wondering who did the seducing in that relationship – which was six years ago, by the way – it was me.”

Doriah grimaced, but jerked his head at the door. The guard he had indicated looked doubtful, but hit the control anyway, and the doors slid open. Doriah followed Hera inside without prompting.

Of the four cells, two on either side of the corridor, only one was in use, the ray shield across the entrance humming softly. Kanan was sitting on the floor with his back against the built-in cot, his eyes shut, but he looked up at the sound of their approach.

Hera felt relief uncurl in her chest at the sight of him. Despite everything, she hadn’t been certain that he was still here, that he was still alive.

He looked exhausted, but not as though he had been ill-treated. Hera had seen that plenty of times before; every time he had returned from the Crucible after being summoned back, which usually resulted in fresh bruises and weeks of sleepless nights. This time he just seemed tired.

“Hey,” he said quietly, light-footed as he approached the shield. “Are you all right? I sensed a disturbance in the Force –”

“I’m fine,” Hera said. She stepped close enough to the energy shield to feel the buzz of it against her fingers as she started to raise one hand. “I should be the one asking that, love.”

He gave her the ghost of a smile, bringing a hand up to mirror hers – not quite touching the shield. “Definite step up on the last cell I was in,” he said. “They didn’t even bother chaining me to the floor.”

“Amateurs.”

Kanan arched an eyebrow. “I’m not complaining.”

“I’m complaining about the fact you’re in a cell at all.” Hera took a deep breath, hating the shield between them, wishing she could step through it into his arms. “I’m going to get you out of here, Kanan.”

*

To his surprise, Alecto was already in his stateroom when Cham returned from the bridge. She raised her head as he stepped inside, looking up at him from where she was sitting cross-legged on the couch.

“Have you spoken to Mishaan?” she asked.

Cham shook his head. “I couldn’t find her, and she isn’t answering her comlink, but it’s late. It’s probably nothing – I should have informed her that the Inquisitor was onboard; she is the captain.”

“As she seems eager to remind us both at every opportunity,” Alecto muttered.

“It is a legitimate security concern.” Cham locked the door behind him and crossed the room to sit down beside her, rubbing at the base of his lekku. “Whatever it is, it can be dealt with in the morning. Now –” Now the last thing he wanted to do was think about Mishaan Secura.

Weariness settled over him like a second skin, the events of the past few days beginning to catch up to him. He tipped his head back against the cushions, shutting his eyes and wondering about the effort it would take to get up and find his bed. Then he blinked and looked around the room. “Where’s Hera?”

Not here was the obvious answer, but for a moment all Cham could think was, _I’ve lost her. I just got her back and I’ve already lost her again._

“She’s with Doriah,” Alecto said. She grimaced, then added, “And her Inquisitor.”

Cham was surprised that Alecto had left Hera, even if it had been with her cousin, but since he had done the same he wasn’t about to say as much. “Do you still want me to kill him?”

Alecto flicked a glance at him. “Yes,” she said baldly. “But I don’t think you should. Not anymore.” She rubbed her hands over her face, forestalling Cham’s question about what had changed her mind on that seemingly intractable point.

She looked as tired as he felt, her lekku drooping and fine lines etched around the corners of her eyes. She had taken her gun belt and blaster off; they were lying on the low table in front of the couch, sprawled across flimsiplasts and data tapes and handwritten notes in Cham’s nearly illegible shorthand.

“Our baby, Cham,” Alecto said softly.

He raised his gaze to her. She reached over and caught his hands in hers, pulling him towards her. “Our _baby_ ,” she said again, her voice low and fervent. “Our daughter, our Hera. She’s here. Our child is here. Our little girl.”

She drew in a breath, her gaze searching his face. “She’s here,” she repeated. “She’s _here_. She’s alive and she’s safe, and she’s _here_ , our daughter, our baby –”

She kissed Cham desperately and messily, his sharpened teeth catching on her lower lip. If she felt it, she made no sign of it, her fingers digging into his shoulders as she climbed into his lap. Cham pulled her against him, opening his mouth to hers, his exhaustion suddenly vanishing like ink in water. Alecto’s hands fumbled with the straps of his armored breastplate, then got it off and tossed it aside; Cham heard something crash but couldn’t bring himself to care.

He and Alecto dragged his shirt off over his head, where it got caught on his lekku before he got them free. Alecto was already pulling at the front of her shirt, buttons snapping before she shrugged it off over her shoulders and leaned down over Cham again. She kissed him again as Cham reached around to undo the catch of her bra and she shifted to let it slide off over her arms before flicking it aside.

Cham slid his hands down her bare back, her lekku falling down over her shoulders to frame her face as they kissed. Her hands were on his belt buckle, tugging it open and working with quick fingers at the strap of his thigh holster. She tossed his blaster onto the table with a scatter of data tapes before Cham pulled her back down for another kiss, lipping her mouth open hungrily.

“Wait,” he mumbled against her mouth a moment later, and as Alecto pulled back to look at him, collected his scrambled thoughts and clarified, “Bed – bedroom. I’m too old to do this here.”

She laughed and climbed off him, pulling him to his feet. Cham paused to put his hands on her waist and pull her close, her bare breasts pressed against his chest as they kissed. They stumbled giggling into his bedroom like children, dragging the curtain between rooms off its hooks and onto the floor before they found the bed, Cham by tripping over his own feet and falling onto it. Alecto pressed him back, grinning down at him for a moment before she stood up to strip her pants off.

“You are the most beautiful woman in the galaxy,” Cham told her, sitting up and distractedly working his boots off.

“That’s your eyesight going along with your back,” Alecto said, but she was smiling as she said it. She laid her hand alongside Cham’s cheek and leaned down to kiss him again. Cham slid his hands up her bare hips to her waist, across the marks on her belly left by her pregnancy years ago.

“My eyesight is fine,” he breathed against her mouth, then drew her down to him.

*

Hera sat down on the floor on one side of the ray shield, while Kanan knelt on the other, and told him everything that had happened since they had left the clearinghouse. She was aware of Doriah at the far end of the corridor, but didn’t pay any attention to him, since it wasn’t as though he didn’t know all of this already. Kanan listened quietly, occasionally asking questions, and when she had finished said, “So what does that mean for us?”

“I don’t know,” Hera said. “They have to let you go eventually; they can’t mean to keep you here forever.”

“I can guess what Ahsoka wants,” he said quietly.

“So can I.” They had seen too many times before the wreckage left from rebels who had gotten their hands on Imperial officers, even on Imperial deserters. Many didn’t see much of a difference. “That’s not going to happen either.”

Kanan shrugged. “Did the kid make it back all right?”

“Sabine commed and told me he was with them.” Hera rubbed a hand over the back of her neck. “Doriah said that someone else from the ship came and talked to you. A Secura.”

“Yeah,” Kanan said. “She mostly just wanted to know who I was and what I was doing here. And what your father was up to.”

“My father is always up to something,” Hera said wearily. “I don’t remember what he was like before the Clone War, not really. It gave him a fight, and power, and he wanted both. Afterwards…afterwards he kept fighting, no matter what it did to him or to us. And it cost us everything.”

She sighed. “I’d forgotten about all of this. The clans, the families, the castes…I’d forgotten how much it mattered. Back in the service it would be shrugged off as a primitive tradition, though plenty of human worlds have something similar – I mean, that’s basically what the Imperial court is. But it just didn’t matter in the service.” Hera was quiet for a moment, plucking at the hem of her jacket. “The only thing that mattered in the service was being able to do your job.”

“That’s not true,” Kanan said gently. “Or you wouldn’t be here.”

Hera raised her gaze to him, trying to force a smile that didn’t want to come. “I know.”

She shifted until she could put her shoulder against the wall next to the humming ray shield, as close as she could get to Kanan without electrocuting herself. “I’m so tired,” she told him. “I don’t want to be here. I don’t want to be anywhere near here.”

“I know.” He laid his hand on the floor next to the ray shield, stretching his fingers out towards hers.

“I just wanted some time,” she said wearily. “We left the Empire, and I didn’t want – I just wanted some time.”

“I know, Hera.” 

“It will be all right,” she made herself say. “I’ll get my father to let you go, and then we’ll leave. Go somewhere else, somewhere that the Empire isn’t looking for us, just – away.”

He was quiet for a moment, then he said, “You should go back to the _Ghost_ and let the others know you’re all right.” He smiled a little, though it had the look of being forced. “Get some sleep in a real bed.”

“I think I’ll just stay here for a little while,” Hera said, leaning her head against the wall. The metal was cool against her lekku and she let her eyes go out of focus, suddenly exhausted. “Is that all right?”

“You know you can stay as long as you want, Hera,” Kanan said. “I won’t complain.” He gave her the ghost of a smile.

Hera laid her hand alongside his, close enough that the ray shield buzzed against her fingers. “It will be all right,” she murmured. “I’ll make it all right, love.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello, all! I'm sorry for the radio silence -- it's been a very rough year for me on multiple levels, and on top of that I recently moved cross-country (again) for graduate school (again). Which is not intended to be an excuse, but is the somewhat unglamorous explanation for this story's unplanned hiatus.
> 
> For new readers, I do daily progress reports over on Tumblr, under the tag "[daily fic snippet](http://bedlamsbard.tumblr.com/tagged/daily-fic-snippet)," if you want to keep track of what I'm working on or get a hint of what's happening in the next chapter or two.


	26. Mercy Kill

For the second time in as many days – and as many years, for that matter – Cham woke up with his wife in bed with him.

Alecto was asleep with her head pillowed against his shoulder, her lekku lying at off-angles over his chest. Always a restless sleeper, she had kicked the blankets half off the bed; those that remained were tangled around their legs, leaving the long green expanse of her back bare. Cham traced the line of her shoulder bone with one finger, smiling at the memory of the previous night. He felt utterly content in a way he hadn’t been for years; his wife was here, his daughter was here, and the universe felt open and full of possibility.

His wife. His child. His family back together, as he had almost begun to believe would never happen again. As they hadn’t been for more than a decade.

Cham grinned up at the room’s painted ceiling, giddy as a schoolboy.

Alecto made a sleepy sound against his skin, stirring as she raised her head. She blinked at him for a moment, then smiled, leaning up into a kiss. Cham wrapped an arm around her waist to brace her as she ran her hands up his chest, her fingers tracing old scars and the still raw place where Hera had shot him on Thyferra.

They spent a few minutes kissing, warm and comfortable with the familiarity of thirty years of marriage, until Alecto rolled over onto her back, pulling Cham on top of her. He settled between her legs, curling his fingers around her thighs as she pressed her hips up against him. Her blunt nails scratched lightly down the bare skin of his back, her head falling back against the pillows as Cham kissed her neck.

“Cham –” she breathed, then moaned, arching up against him.

Cham smiled against her skin, though his own breath was coming in quick gasps. Alecto tugged him back up into a kiss, wrapping her legs around his waist.

They made love slowly, without last night’s earlier desperation. Afterwards, sweat cooling on their skin, Alecto curled in the curve of Cham’s arms and said softly, “We were good together, weren’t we?”

He pressed a kiss to her forehead. “We still are.”

“I was so angry at you for so long,” she murmured.

“I’ve noticed,” Cham said.

She laughed. “I’m not subtle, am I? I never have been.”

“No,” Cham said, and kissed her mouth again. “And that’s why I love you.”

Alecto punched him lightly in the shoulder. “I hope that’s not the only reason,” she said, but her voice sobered a moment later. “When I was shot in the Lessu riots and you sent us away, I was furious with you. We’d fought the Clone War together, and no matter what the Curia said – what _you_ said – I knew there was another war coming. I wanted us to face it together. But you sent us away.”

Cham had relived those arguments nearly every day for the past ten years. “I wanted you to be safe. You and Hera both. I thought –”

“I know.” There was none of her usual anger in her voice. “I know what you thought. And you might have been right, if the Empire had been anything but what it was.”

“I think I’ve paid for that decision,” Cham said slowly. “I think I’ll be paying for it the rest of my life.”

“Yes.” Alecto rolled onto her back, staring up at the ceiling and rubbing the tip of one lek between her fingers. Cham propped himself up on an elbow to watch her.

“I never thought I would see her again,” she said softly. “I thought I’d lost her forever. That we had lost her.” After a moment she turned her head to look at him. “Sometimes it feels as though we’ve been frozen in amber since we left Ryloth – the first time, I mean, not the second. That we could never be what we were until Hera came back, and – I thought that she would never come back.”

“And now?” Cham said softly.

“Now I feel like I can breathe again,” Alecto said. “It’s like I was sleeping all those years and I’ve just woken up.” She looked over at him. “Does any of that make sense?”

“Yes,” Cham said. “I know what you mean.”

“I know it’s not the same as it was before,” Alecto said slowly, “that it can’t ever be like it was – not for you and me, not for Hera, not for our family – but it feels like we have a chance.” She leaned over suddenly and kissed him, her lips light against his. “For the first time in years, Cham, it feels like we have a chance.”

*

The hangar bay had mostly cleared out during the deepest parts of the night cycle, except for the guards who lingered discreetly near the starfighters and tried not to watch the _Ghost_ too obviously. Morning, or what passed for it in deep space, brought a slow influx of pilots and mechanics to work on their damaged ships. Hera watched them from the _Ghost_ , sitting on the ramp and nursing a cup of caf.

She got a few curious looks, but with the others inside still sleeping off the adrenaline of the past few days she was just a Twi’lek among other Twi’leks – not worth a second glance. It wasn’t a feeling that Hera was accustomed to and she wasn’t certain how she felt about it. Even when she and Kanan had been doing plainclothes undercover assignments, she had been achingly aware of her differences, convinced that every glance meant that someone had recognized her for either an Imperial officer or Cham Syndulla’s missing daughter. And they hadn’t done any of those for a long time now; it had become close to impossible after Kanan had come back from the Crucible.

_These are your people_ , Hera thought, forcing herself to articulate the words. 

But the thought rang hollow to her. In a way Hera wanted to believe that it would have been different if it had been Ryloth they had returned to, if this had been the estate where she had been born and where her family had lived for time out of mind. The heartlands of the clan territories were consecrated ground, sacred to each clan and the gods the curiate families claimed descent from. It was why curiates very seldom left Ryloth; clan heads never did.

Never, until her father.

Hera lowered her gaze to the milky surface of her caf and stared at it, trying to divine her own feelings from the liquid. None of that mattered anymore, or at least it shouldn’t have. Hera had left that behind even before she had gone to the Academy – had been forced to leave it behind, because she hadn’t been allowed to stay on Ryloth even though it should have been her sacred duty.

Her mother had brought her family’s household gods with them to Zardossa Stix, along with the kalikori, but they had all been destroyed when the colony had burned. The Syndulla household gods – and by extension those of the entire clan – were presumably somewhere on the _Forlorn Hope_. There had to be a shrine somewhere on the ship with the metal figurines that represented the guardian spirits of each household and family, the minor deities that served the great gods of Ryloth. Hera knew where it would have been in any house back on Ryloth, but she had no idea where it would be here.

_My gods?_ Hera hadn’t thought about them in years, not since it had become clear that there was no one, human or divine, coming to save her from the Spire. Maybe not even then, because if they really had been able to protect her, then the colony would never have burned. The Empire would never have come for them.

She was so deep in thought that she didn’t hear the bootsteps coming towards her, not until a voice said, “Hera?” and she looked up.

Her father was standing in front of her, his expression a little anxious. Hera clasped her hands around her mug and stared up at him, trying and failing to think of something to say.

He waited for her response for a few moments, then seemed to realize that none would be forthcoming, and said, “May I sit with you?”

Hera looked back down at her caf, too weary to fight with him. Yesterday’s fury had faded to dull resignation, leaving her utterly wrung out. “It’s your ship.”

“It was meant for you.” His boots tapped lightly against the _Ghost_ ’s ramp as he came up to sit down beside her. “For you and your cousins.”

“I already have a ship,” Hera said.

“This ship – this fleet – could be yours,” her father said. “It should be.”

She shook her head. “I don’t want it. Give it to Doriah or Xiaan or Ojeda. Give it to anyone but me.”

“Hera –” He put his hand on her shoulder, hesitating for a moment when she started, but didn’t release her. After a moment Hera looked up at him.

“When you and your mother left, I was heartbroken,” Cham said. “When I sent you away, it was because I was afraid. After the riots in Lessu, I knew that there would never be peace, not while the Empire remained on Ryloth, and I knew that they would never willingly leave.” He sighed. “If there is one thing I have learned in my life, it is that you can never prevent the ones you love from being harmed, just put it off a little longer. I thought that that would be enough. If I could draw the Emperor’s eye to me, to Ryloth, then perhaps you and the others would have a few more years of peace. You and your mother might have hated me for it, but at least you would both be alive to do so.”

Hera looked back down at her caf without really seeing it. “It doesn’t matter,” she said. “That was a long time ago.”

“It matters because neither of us would be here without it,” her father said. “None of us would.” His gesture encompassed not just the hangar, but the ship itself and the fleet surrounding it. “It matters because that decision created the people we are today, both of us.”

“I’m not on this ship right now because you sent me away ten years ago,” Hera said.

For a moment she thought that her father was going to contest this, then Cham allowed, “I did not give the order to bring the Inquisitor here.”

“He has a name, Father,” Hera said. As Cham looked at her, frowning, she added, “The Inquisition takes away their recruits’ names. When Kanan came back from the Crucible the first time, he didn’t…he didn’t remember his, not always.”

He still didn’t on his bad days, but Hera wasn’t about to tell her father that.

Cham nodded slowly, but only said, “I see.”

Hera took a sip of her caf just to have something to do; it had gone lukewarm while she had been sitting here. “Can I ask a question?” she said eventually.

“Of course.” There was a hopeful note in her father’s voice that made her shift uncomfortably, looking away in the direction of the starfighters. If the repair crews had noticed the Syndulla patriarch’s presence here, they were doing a good job of pretending otherwise.

Hera swallowed around the heavily-sweetened taste of the caf and said without looking at him, “How did you get the footage of me from the Spire?”

Her father hesitated, then said, “Fulcrum found it when she was on an unrelated mission there. She recognized your name on the files and brought them to me.” Carefully, he added, “Your mother said she spoke to you about –”

“That she was on Naraka and not Stygeon Prime,” Hera said. “I know. It doesn’t matter anymore.”

“Doesn’t it?”

“It’s not like knowing the truth now can change anything that happened.” Hera didn’t even think that knowing the truth then would have changed anything, since it still would have left her exactly where she had been, sitting in an Imperial prison cell with no future stretching out in front of her. No one had come for her.

Her father was quiet. On the other side of the hangar, something slipped with a crash that made everyone look up, the mechanic crew working on the starfighter in question jumping back. Even from here, Hera could hear the astromech droid with them beeping in aggrieved frustration, something about idiot Twi’leks and their slippery organic fingers. Chopper would have been proud.

Once he seemed certain that no one had been injured, Cham said, “Aren’t there any other questions you want to ask me?”

Hera looked back down at her caf, swirling the milky liquid around. “No,” she said, and then, because she couldn’t help herself, “Why did you kill Agent Beneke? Is that why you went to Naboo?”

Her father looked at her in surprise. “No,” he said. “We went there for another reason.”

_Ojeda_ , Hera thought, and had to fight down her sharp stab of irrational jealousy. Her cousin had needed to be rescued. Hera hadn’t been.

_But they could have come earlier_ , a voice inside her whispered. _They could have come when you both needed it._

Slowly, her father went on, “We did not go there with the intent to kill anyone, but – I am not certain that we would not have done so, if I had known he would be there. For what he did to you.”

Hera looked up at him in surprise. “He didn’t do anything to me.”

Her father just looked at her, and after a moment Hera glanced aside, staring at the starfighters as a pair of mechanics and a droid levered up a massive piece of durasteel sheeting streaked with carbon scoring.

“He was my mentor,” she said eventually. “He got me out of prison.”

“He put you there.”

Hera couldn’t deny that. She kept looking at the starfighters as she said, “You didn’t have to kill him.”

“Yes,” her father said. “I did.” He hesitated, then started to ask, “Were you and he lo –”

“No!” Hera slapped her caf aside in horror, liquid splashing across her thighs to run down the ramp. The cup bounced, at least.

She fumbled for it and managed to catch it before it rolled off the ramp, her cheeks burning as she turned back to her father. “You’re as bad as the gossips in the Bureau,” she managed to say. “No, I wasn’t sleeping with him, or with anyone else except Kanan, for that matter. Just because I’m a Twi’lek –”

“Hera, I’m sorry –” Her father tried to put his hand on her wrist, but Hera jerked away, out of his reach and into a puddle of caf. He looked torn, his hand still outstretched before he let it fall. “That is not what I believe. He said something that made me think –”

“Well, I’m not,” Hera snapped. A moment later she remembered to correct herself. “I wasn’t. Ever. He doesn’t like nonhumans that way.”

The funny thing was that Hera had wondered what she would do if Agent Beneke had ever asked. Back at the Academy it was the kind of gossip that came up on occasion – not always about her, but other cadets, young officers, even a few stormtroopers or pilots. Sex wasn’t an approved way of getting ahead in the Empire – technically it was against regulations up and down the chain of command – but it did happen from time to time.

She rolled the cup back and forth between her hands, then pushed to her feet. “I need to change.”

Her father stood too. For one horrifying moment Hera thought that he was going to follow her into the _Ghost_ , then he said, “I’ll wait for you.”

“What if I don’t want to come back out?” Hera said.

Cham frowned. All he would have had to say was that he’d toss Kanan out an airlock if she didn’t, but what he said was, “That’s your choice. But I hope you will.”

Hera shut her eyes. “I’ll come back,” she said, then retreated back into the familiar space of the _Ghost_.

Chopper turned out to be in the cockpit, probably watching the starfighters, and he rolled over to her as she pulled herself up. Hera laid a hand on his dome, smiling a little as her made a small soothing noise almost like a tooka’s purr. Then he poked at the caf stains on her pants with one of his manipulators and grumbled a question.

“No, my father didn’t spill it on me,” Hera said. “I spilled it on myself; don’t be ridiculous.” She handed him the empty cup and stepped out into the corridor, listening for a moment, but it didn’t sound like anyone else was awake yet. Or if they were, they were being quiet about it.

She went into her cabin, looking away from the accusing glare of her uniform, which was hanging up because Hera couldn’t bear to pack it away yet. She stripped out of her dirty clothes and found something clean that didn’t scream _Imperial officer_ , then just stood still, staring blankly at her reflection in the mirror.

_Cham Syndulla’s daughter_ , she thought, trying to make the words have meaning. She had been someone else for so long that she didn’t know how to fit herself back into that shape again, or if she even wanted to, but here it was all that mattered. It was as if everything else she was had faded away to obscurity in the face of this one thing.

Grimacing, she turned away from the mirror to buckle her gun belt back on.

Zeb had wandered out of his room by the time she emerged, scratching his chin and yawning. He stopped when he saw her, saying, “You all right?”

“No,” Hera told him.

He came over to her and put an arm around her shoulders; Hera leaned against him, unspeakably weary. “My father’s outside.”

“You need backup?”

She shook her head. “He’s my father. I have to do this myself.” She took a deep breath. “Thank you, though.”

Zeb nodded solemnly and released her. “We’re here if you need us,” he said.

It helped to hear that said, even if Hera knew that realistically there wasn’t much anyone other than her could do.

When she went back outside, it was to find her father talking to a purple-skinned Twi’lek man she didn’t recognize. He looked at Hera with interest, his gaze going to the markings on her lekku before flicking down to her arms. Hera tugged her long sleeves down past her wrists, resisting the urge to worry at them. Curiate Twi’lek women usually left their arms bare to display their caste markings, she remembered.

“My daughter Hera,” Cham said to him. “Hera, this is Keto Amersu, head of Clan Amersu in the fleet.”

The clan name was vaguely familiar, but not enough that Hera could remember anything about it. She nodded to Keto, whose expression of curiosity had only deepened.

“I didn’t know you had a daughter,” he said to Cham.

Cham’s expression was warning. “She’s been away.”

Keto took the dismissal for what it was and stepped away. Cham watched him depart with a frown, saying, “His ship was destroyed at the battle; we picked up the escape pods. He and his people should have transferred back to another Amersu ship by now, but we’ve been busy with repairs.” Seeing her blank expression, he clarified, “Amersu is a patrician clan from around the western mountains. Keto brought half the clan with him when he joined the fleet, but the other half stayed on Ryloth under his brother Kolo.”

“Oh,” Hera said, tried to make herself care, and failed miserably.

This must have been evident on her face, because her father said, “It’s not important now. Will you walk with me?”

Hera crossed her arms. “Where?” she asked warily.

“Around the ship.”

Hera looked at him for a long moment. _Around the ship_ was clearly code for _meet your people_ , and she wasn’t sure that she was ready for that, now or ever. But if she didn’t go with him now, he might use it as an excuse not to release Kanan, and Hera didn’t want to give him any more reasons not to do so.

“All right,” she said.

He had started to look worried, but at this his expression cleared. “This is a good place,” he told her. “You’ll see.”

*

“Something’s wrong,” Ahsoka said out loud.

She sat back on her heels and looked down at the comlink in her hand, an old Clone Wars era one with a boosted range and the best encryptions a prince of Alderaan could get his hands on. Ahsoka had been trying to get in touch with Barriss since she had arrived back at the Free Ryloth fleet, but the only response she had gotten was silence.

Ahsoka put the comlink down and scrubbed her hands over her face. Even putting aside the radio silence from Barriss, she felt uneasy; the Force was clouded in a way she didn’t like and wasn’t certain how to interpret, except that she had the feeling it heralded something yet to come. She just didn’t know what that was.

_Of course the Force is clouded, there’s a fallen Jedi cooling his heels a few decks down._

And a feral Force-user in the _Forlorn Hope_ ’s other hangar bay. Or Force-sensitive, at least; Ahsoka wasn’t certain how much Force use Ezra had actually done, but it was enough that she could sense it on him. He didn’t know how to hide it yet, and that meant that it was obvious to anyone trained, whether they were looking for him or not. It was undoubtedly how the Inquisitors back at the clearinghouse had tracked them through the asteroid, since it also happened to be exactly how Ahsoka had found him and Kanan.

It was the first time in fifteen years that Ahsoka had revealed herself to an Inquisitor other than Barriss Offee and not killed them immediately afterwards. She didn’t need Kanan Jarrus to tell her that that wasn’t going to end well. For them.

Wincing at the way her back popped, Ahsoka unfolded herself from her seat on her meditation cushion. She laced her fingers together and stretched her arms up over her head, rising up on her toes as she did so. After a moment she came back down on flat feet, rolling her shoulders back with another collection of popping and cracking sounds.

“Ow,” she said, more for the sake of hearing her own voice than because it really hurt. After all the company of the past few days, the _Aegis_ felt strangely hollow. Ahsoka had found herself walking the bounds of the ship, feeling the little traces of personality left behind in the Force. Force-users like Kanan and Ezra left the strongest impressions, but all living beings had at least a touch of the Force, and Ahsoka could feel the remnants of Cham Syndulla and the other members of his family with a little more effort.

She could feel something else, too.

Bare-footed on the cold metal floor, Ahsoka crossed her cabin and knelt down to open the safe beneath her bunk with a faint touch of the Force, holding her palm out over the lock and watching the dial spin until it suddenly sprang open. She removed the contents and straightened up again to dump them onto her bunk, nudging the safe door closed with her foot.

She knew that the only reason she was aware of the kyber crystals in Kanan’s lightsabers resonating in the Force was because she knew they were there; left to their own devices, kybers seldom let themselves be known to anyone but their chosen Jedi. Or at least that was how it had been explained to her when she had been a padawan, but even the Jedi hadn’t known as much about kyber crystals as they would have liked. She didn’t know if the Sith – and by extension the Inquisition – knew more.

She turned the blackened metal lightsaber over with one finger, closing her eyes and reaching out into the Force. Its resonance – what Master Yoda had called the crystal’s song – was a little discordant to her senses, but Ahsoka wasn’t certain whether that had to do with the nature of the crystal itself or if it was simply due to the fact that it wasn’t _her_ crystal. She knew how red crystals were made. If Kanan Jarrus had done _that_ –

There were few things that the Jedi believed that there was no coming back from; that was one of them. Kyber crystals might have been tools, but they were sacred too. Making the crystal bleed was an act of violence against the Force itself.

_Is perverting a crystal really worse than anything else he did for the Empire?_ Ahsoka asked herself, running a finger down the shaft of the lightsaber. She had recruited Imperials before, men and women who had done terrible things in the Emperor’s name and lived to regret it. Only on a few occasions had they cost her more than a sleepless night here or there, no matter how grievous their crimes.

For that matter, she had done terrible things in the name of the Rebellion, and recruited men and women to do things that she knew she couldn’t.

But the idea of recruiting an Inquisitor, of someone who had used the Force to commit great evil, made her stomach turn.

_Different than Barriss?_ She rolled the lightsaber over again, half-wishing that she had even a trace of psychometry as a wild talent, but it was one of the Force skills she had never been able to develop. On the other hand, maybe she didn’t want to know what Kanan had done with that lightsaber.

Barriss Offee was mad, at least to some extent. For that matter, Ahsoka was under no illusions about her own sanity. Force-users were never the most stable of individuals anyway; most sentients were incapable of withstanding the true immensity of the Force. Training and discipline kept Jedi – and presumably Sith, Bardottan adepts, Nightsisters, and other Force-users – from being overwhelmed by it, but the risk was always there. There were – had been – some schools of thought among the Jedi Order that the discipline of the Order itself, the presence of multiple Force-users in one place, had been meant to keep Jedi from losing themselves in the Force. Without that structure, there was nothing to ground an individual; it was why the Sith and their rule of two were always weaker and more vulnerable to corruption.

Ahsoka’s instincts said that Kanan Jarrus was perfectly sane. Her rational mind, however, was of the opinion that if he hadn’t been insane when he had gone into the Crucible, he had been when he had come out of it.

_And he volunteered. No matter why he did it, he still volunteered._

No true Jedi would have done that.

Frowning to herself, Ahsoka touched the other lightsaber. This one’s song was so faint that she wondered for a moment if the kyber inside was dead, if there even was a way to destroy a kyber, before she remembered that this was the same lightsaber Kanan had ignited earlier. It was there. It just didn’t want to talk to her.

“Stubborn,” she said out loud, but couldn’t help grinning a little; she had discovered over the years that kyber crystals did have personalities of their own, though not ones that were easy for most sentients, even Jedi, to understand.

She wasn’t surprised that the kyber was hiding from her. After what had happened to the Jedi, and then to places like Ilum and Jedha, the Force had to be screaming in whatever way the crystals understood it. And they _did_ understand it, somehow.

Ahsoka sat down on the bed, arranging the two lightsabers in front of her, then took her own ‘sabers off their hooks and laid them down parallel to Kanan’s. She wasn’t certain what she was doing – this wasn’t something taught in the Temple – but it was the only thing she could think of. _Your master and I aren’t the same, but we’re close enough._ Whether or not it worked depended on just how alive kyber crystals really were.

It must have worked, because for an instant, nothing more, Ahsoka felt the crystal resonate. It rang pure and true, though with the same faint discordance as the other crystal. Though she couldn’t sense any shadow of the dark side, it could be a sign of corruption. It could also just be because it was Kanan’s crystal, not hers. And it could be that his corruption was echoed in his crystals. There was just no way to know.

Ahsoka opened her eyes and sat back, looking down at the four lightsabers again. She had been hoping for answers, but the Force had told her nothing at all, and she was right back where she had started.

*

Doriah drifted out of sleep to find Xiaan cuddled up beside him, watching something on her datapad with the sound off. His first thought was that it was something else from the ISB files, which he really didn’t want her to bring into bed with them, but on closer inspection it turned out to be an old cartoon about an anooba raised by a family of tookas. She was mouthing the words silently along with the closed captioning, and didn’t seem to realize he was awake until he tugged gently on one of her lekku. Then she paused the cartoon, set the datapad aside, and squirmed around to smile at him.

She had already been in bed by the time Doriah had returned after walking Hera back to her ship, though she hadn’t been asleep yet. Doriah hadn’t liked leaving Hera with a bunch of former Imperials, even if Hera was a former Imperial herself, but the alternative had been to let her stay in the brig with her boyfriend overnight. Uncle Cham would have spaced Doriah for that, no matter that it was what Hera had wanted.

“Hey,” Doriah murmured. He kissed Xiaan’s forehead, grinning as she wrinkled her nose at him. “Have you been up long?”

She shrugged. “A little while.” She flopped back against the pillows, plaiting the fringed hem of their blanket between her fingers. “I wanted to go see Hera, but I thought I should wait for you. And it’s really early.”

Doriah picked up her datapad to check the time and had to agree. “You shouldn’t go over there on your own.”

Xiaan shrugged again. “It’s not like Uncle doesn’t have guards on the ship, I saw them yesterday. And all the pilots are there too.”

“Still.” He didn’t want Xiaan anywhere near Imperials, former or not.

She was quiet for a moment, still playing with the blanket, then said, “Ojeda doesn’t want to see Hera.”

“What?” Doriah pushed himself up on one elbow, frowning at her. Ojeda had finally been given her own stateroom elsewhere in the Residency, which had required a little bit of shuffling (over her protests, since she hadn’t wanted to put anyone out of their rooms), and he hadn’t had a chance to see her the previous day. “Why?”

Xiaan shrugged for a third time. “She said.”

“Is she angry at Hera?” Doriah asked, bewildered; it wasn’t like it was Hera’s fault she had been brainwashed into becoming an Imperial officer and not sold into slavery like the rest of them. Not that Doriah had been planning on trying to have that argument with either of his cousins.

“I don’t know. She just said she didn’t want to see Hera, and that Hera probably didn’t want to see her, either.” Xiaan frowned, then tossed the blanket aside as if she had grown bored with it and sat up.

Doriah rubbed a hand over his face. “I’ll talk to Ojeda. She’s probably just –” He had no idea what could possibly be going through Ojeda’s head. She had come back under very different circumstances than he and Xiaan had, and in the little Doriah had seen of her in the past few days he had been able to tell it was wearing on her. “I’ll talk to her.”

Xiaan nodded, looking serious. She climbed out of the bed and stretched, coming up onto her toes, then started in the direction of the refresher. She was at the door when she paused and turned back.

Doriah had just laid back, wondering if he could sleep for a few more hours, but he looked up again at Xiaan’s inquiring gaze. “What?”

“I want to see Hera’s Inquisitor,” she said.

That was a question with an easy answer. “No.”

Xiaan crossed her arms over her chest and leaned back against the wall, looking as stubborn as Hera had last night. “Why not?”

“Because he’s a murderer with arcane powers who’s locked up because he might use those powers on us,” Doriah said dryly. “And he’s an Imperial.”

“He deserted.”

“He says he deserted.”

“Hera says he deserted.”

“Hera doesn’t think straight around him,” Doriah pointed out. Possibly because of the Inquisitor using the Force on her, though Doriah was less certain of it now that he had seen them together, even with a ray shield between them. For one, if the Inquisitor was using his mind tricks on Hera, Doriah thought that he would have made her let him out of his cell. Instead they had just sat there and talked.

Xiaan hesitated, dragging one foot across the deck, then said, “Is it true he’s a Jedi?”

Doriah sat up. “Who told you that?”

She shrugged. “I just heard it. You know. Around.”

“Nobody’s even supposed to know he’s onboard!”

Xiaan gave him a withering look. “There are two strange ships docked in the hangars and a lot of people who aren’t Twi’leks or even fleet onboard. And there are guards in the corridor outside the brig, which hasn’t happened in years. And it isn’t like no one saw him being brought onboard, in binders and under guard. People aren’t stupid, Doriah.”

Doriah rubbed his hands over his face. This sounded like a problem for Uncle Cham to deal with, except that he knew his uncle was probably too distracted by Hera’s arrival to think about it. “There’s no reason for anyone to think he’s a Jedi. Who said that?”

Xiaan lifted a shoulder in a shrug. “Some people are saying it. Is he?”

“The Jedi are all dead, Xi. And even if they weren’t, he wouldn’t be one.”

She took this in, frowning, and started to turn again. Just when Doriah was starting to think that he really was going to get the opportunity to go back to sleep until a more reasonable hour, she said suddenly, “Did he hurt Hera?”

That had an easy answer too. “Yes.”

Xiaan looked uncertain. “I heard them talking to each other, back during the battle – on the comm, I mean. And he –”

“He hurt her. Even if he didn’t mean to, even if she doesn’t think he did, he hurt her. He’s human. That’s all they do. It’s all they’re capable of. You know that.”

Xiaan glanced down at the deck, then went into the refresher without another word.

Doriah slumped back against the pillow, throwing an arm up over his eyes. It had been stupid to say that to Xiaan, even though it was true. If anyone should have known better than to say as much, it was him.

*

“Hera Syndulla has joined the Free Ryloth fleet.”

The three Inquisitors looked up as Kallus entered the _Relentless_ ’s situation room. So did Admiral Konstantine, who was standing on the opposite side of the holotable as far away from them as he could get. Since none of the Inquisitors seemed to want to be near each other either, this meant that the four beings were more or less evenly placed around the holotable.

Kallus strode over to join Konstantine, bringing up an image of the Free Ryloth fleet. It wasn’t as accurate as he would have preferred, since the hologram had been recorded prior to the battle, but the ships that had destroyed had been removed and it showed the fleet in what seemed to be its normal configuration. “My contact in the fleet has reported that within the last twelve standard hours, a Corellian freighter matching the description of Agent Syndulla’s ship landed on the _Forlorn Hope_.”

“You are certain that it is the same ship?” asked the Hangman. “There is more than one VCX-100 in the galaxy.”

“Hera Syndulla is confirmed as being aboard,” Kallus said. “It’s her.”

“And the traitor is with her?” the Hangman pressed.

“That hasn’t yet been confirmed, but given that the Inquisitor –” At the glares he got from all three of them, Kallus corrected himself, “– given that Kanan Jarrus has only left Hera Syndulla’s side when pressed over the past six years, it seems unlikely that he would have done so now.”

“Then there is no further reason to delay,” Admiral Konstantine declared. “Fleet reinforcements are already en route from elsewhere in the sector: this time there will be no escape for the Twi’leks. We shall meet them with overwhelming force.”

“The Crucible agrees,” said the First Inquisitor. Konstantine flinched a little under her sudden attention, making the other female Inquisitor smirk.

“What do you mean?” Kallus asked warily; in his admittedly limited experience Inquisitors didn’t tend to agree with much, either with other members of the Imperial service or with each other.

“Kanan Jarrus,” said Patience, “is a traitor to the Inquisition and to the Empire.”

“I’ve noticed.”

“He was seen with another Force-user at the asteroid clearinghouse,” rumbled the Hangman. “Someone whom the Crucible has long been searching for.”

“Another Jedi?” said Kallus. “For a people that are supposed to have been wiped out fifteen years ago, they seem to be appearing at an alarming rate recently.”

“Not a Jedi like the Hunter’s Hound,” said the First, “but trained by them. She left the Order before it was destroyed.”

“You would know,” Patience said under her breath.

The First flicked a glance at the other woman over her veil, but didn’t respond.

Kallus decided to ignore the interchange and said, “I’m certain that the three of you are more than a match for two former Jedi.”

There was a moment of silent that stretched out between them. Konstantine, apparently surprised, shot Kallus a sharp look in a question; Kallus shrugged back. The ISB never dealt with this sort of thing, since Imperial protocol was to send for the Inquisition at the first hint of anything esoteric. Kallus thought that this tended to lead to irrationality on the subject on the part of the other branches of the service, but protocol was protocol.

As the moment dragged out, Kallus said, “I see I was mistaken. What do you plan to do about this, since you seem so intimidated by one traitor and one half-trained ex-Jedi?”

“Nothing you need trouble yourself with, Agent Kallus,” said the Hangman. “The others are already on their way.”

“The – others?” Admiral Konstantine asked. “What others?”

Patience smirked. “The rest of the Inquisition, of course,” she said. “This is a Hunt.”

*

“Tell me about the Inquisition.”

Kanan didn’t even bother to look at her. “No.”

Ahsoka resisted her urge to hiss in frustration as she sat back on her heels, watching Kanan through the ray shield that separated them. They were alone in the brig, though there were guards outside the door, so she didn’t have to worry about anything either of them said being overheard. Of course, right now that wasn’t a problem because Kanan didn’t seem remotely inclined to talk to her about anything, let alone sensitive material.

She tried again. “Kanan, I want to help you. I can speak for you to Cham Syndulla, but you have to give me something to work with. You were willing to speak to me before –”

“That was then,” Kanan said. “This is now.”

He was sitting on the bunk that ran across the back wall of the narrow cell, his boots off and his long legs stretched out along the bed. It was a pose that Ahsoka found deceptively casual, like he was trying to irritate her into forgetting that he was as much a predator as she was. The only difference was which of them was in the cage.

“Besides,” he added, “you know that no matter what you say General Syndulla isn’t going to let me out of here while I’ve still got a pulse.”

“You don’t know that,” Ahsoka said. “But he definitely won’t do so while he’s still thinking of you like an enemy, and it’s not like you’re making any attempt at changing his mind.”

He shrugged. “You and I both know what’s going to happen when someone lets that shield down,” he said. “One of us is going to die.”

“You’ve been an Inquisitor for so long that you’ve forgotten that most people aren’t like that,” Ahsoka said.

He glanced at her long enough for her to see his humorless grin. “I’ve been an Inquisitor for so long I’ve forgotten a lot of things.”

That was obvious. Trying a new tack, Ahsoka said, “Hera is attempting to convince her father to release you. Refusing to cooperate will just make it harder for her.”

Kanan hesitated, his expression torn, but as Ahsoka had expected bringing his lover into it had tipped the scales in her favor. _It’s like dealing with Anakin on one of his bad days_ , she thought. After so much time, the memory still hurt, but it wasn’t a fresh wound anymore, just an old throbbing ache that still had the capacity to surprise her.

Kanan got up and came over to sit down cross-legged in front of her, folding his hands in his lap. “What do you want to know?” he asked, wary.

Ahsoka tried not to let her relief show, since she didn’t know how much Kanan would actually be willing to tell her. “How many Inquisitors are there?”

“More than enough for the two of us.” As she tipped her head at him, waiting for a more coherent response, he amended, “I’m not sure exactly. There are fewer now than there were six years ago, and there weren’t all that many then, not really.”

“Why not?”

He grimaced. “There’s a pretty high mortality rate. And – there are fewer Force-sensitives around now than there were fifteen years ago, or even ten. Most of the ones that are around either aren’t strong enough or don’t have the temperament for it.” He glanced down, maybe remembering that he did have the temperament for it and ashamed of it. “There’s not as much need anymore, either,” he added hastily, as if trying to move on from that. “When the Inquisition was founded – at least how I’ve heard it – the Emperor needed Force-users capable of going toe to toe with any Jedi that survived the Purge, along with the other Force disciplines. But now there are no more Jedi and no one else either, and having a bunch of trained Force-users around isn’t a good thing anymore.”

“But the Inquisition is still recruiting?”

He frowned, like he wasn’t certain of the answer. “For now. Better with us – them – than out there on their own.”

“I heard about what happened on Bardotta and Dorin,” Ahsoka said cautiously. He glanced aside, and Ahsoka realized – running the dates back through her head – that he might very well have been involved in one or both of those attacks.

Eventually, he said, “When the First and the others brought me back to Mustafar the other day, the Whip had the trainees out. I only saw nine of them, plus the trainers. I don’t know how many were killed when my team got me out. I know the Whip is dead. There are probably fewer than twenty other Inquisitors in the field right now, maybe less than that, maybe a lot less than that. They sent five after me on Lothal.”

“Who’s the Whip? The head of the Inquisition?”

Kanan shook his head. “He was the chief trainer,” he said. “I don’t know that I’ve ever heard of him going out into the field, even on a Hunt. But he’s dead now.”

“You’re certain of that?”

“I cut his head off myself.”

Ahsoka had to admit that that seemed fairly unequivocal. “Do you know who’s in charge now?”

He hesitated. “It’s not like the Order. There’s no Council or anything. There was a – but he was – he –”

Ahsoka felt the echo of his distress reverberate through the Force. He looked away from her, his cheeks flushed, and pushed the heels of his hands against his knees. There could only be one person in the Inquisition who could get this kind of reaction from him.

“The Hunter,” she said, and saw him flinch. “Your master. He was the head of the Inquisition?”

“He died,” Kanan mumbled.

This was like talking to a youngling, except Ahsoka probably would have gotten more sense out of a youngling. Most younglings didn’t have this kind of emotional attachment to someone they had simultaneously hated and loved, if Ahsoka was right about Kanan’s feelings towards the Hunter.

“I know he died,” Ahsoka said, wondered if it would help to remind Kanan that she had been the one who killed him, and decided probably not. “But he was the head of the Inquisition?”

She watched him struggle with his emotions for a few moments more before he finally said, “Inquisitors in the field. Me.”

Curious, Ahsoka asked, “What does Hera think of that?”

He flinched like she had slapped him, his distress resonating through the Force again. “She doesn’t know.” At Ahsoka’s skeptical look – because Hera Syndulla would have to be stupid not to realize how badly her lover had been damaged by the Crucible, and she was a far thing from that – he added clumsily, “I didn’t let her see him with me.”

“Why did he let you go back out into the field with her?” Ahsoka asked.

“Not his decision,” Kanan muttered, then braced his shoulders and said clearly, “I’m not going to talk about him anymore. My lord is in charge of the Inquisition.” He grimaced, realizing his slip, and corrected himself. “Lord Vader – Darth Vader. But he’s not at the Crucible very often; he has a base elsewhere on Mustafar. He mostly let the Whip and my ma – he let the Inquisitors take care of our own. Their own.”

Ahsoka took this in. She had never encountered Darth Vader, a fact for which she was profoundly grateful even if it would have given her the opportunity to take a Sith lord out of the galaxy. She was guessing from the expression on Kanan’s face that it was Vader who had decided that he shouldn’t be paired up with the Hunter anymore. A duo of corrupted former Jedi must have been a risk to the Sith, especially given how loyal Kanan seemed to have been to his teacher.

“How did you get your lightsaber?” she asked, changing the subject. “Your crystal? I’ve seen what the Empire has done to Ilum.”

He looked tiredly at her. “I killed a trainee and took it from him.”

Ahsoka blinked. “So you didn’t –”

He met her gaze. “No.”

That was reassuring in a way, even if Ahsoka wasn’t certain how much it meant. It was still a red lightsaber, even if he hadn’t bled the crystal himself.

Kanan looked away from her, clearly uneasy at the directions her questioning had taken. “None of this is anything General Syndulla can use.”

“Is there something that is?”

He appeared to debate this with himself while Ahsoka stared at him and tried to guess what was going through his head. She might have left the Order, but she had no idea how to begin to understand someone who had strayed so far from the light of the Jedi and then tried to walk it back.

Finally, he said, “The Inquisition is going to come for us both. You know that, right?”

*

Doriah eventually dragged himself out of bed and went to hunt down Ojeda, eventually tracking her to the pilots’ rec room. She was helping Numa repaint the designs on her helmet, while Sthenno and Nabor watched them and offered suggestions. Doriah checked the ready board as he came in; with his ‘fighter still in disassembled pieces on the hangar floor he wasn’t on duty unless he borrowed his aunt’s like he had yesterday, a fact that made his nerves itch a little with incipient stress. He had been grounded before; he didn’t like the idea of his squadron being in the air without him.

Nabor saw him first, waving him over. Numa flicked a glance up at him and muttered a greeting, unwilling to meet his gaze; Doriah didn’t know what that was about and didn’t have the energy to find out just now.

“Your bird fixed yet?” Sthenno asked.

Doriah shook his head. “The computers went wild across the board and none of the astromechs can figure out why. We might have to wipe them all and reprogram them. Not to mention whatever’s going on in the engine.”

Sthenno and Nabor both grimaced. Numa grimaced too, but she didn’t look up from the stenciled design she was filling in on the side of her helmet.

“Ojeda, do you have a minute?” Doriah said.

She hesitated, but he suspected obedience had been drilled into her for so long that she wasn’t very good at refusing requests. Taking advantage of that wasn’t exactly a kind thing to do, but Doriah wasn’t feeling very kind at the moment.

She handed the paint jar she had been holding to Sthenno and followed Doriah into one of the little cubbies that opened off the rec room. Doriah twitched the curtain closed, which wouldn’t do much to keep their conversation private but which was better than nothing.

“Ojeda –”

She shook her head. “I don’t have anything to say to her,” she said in Basic, which was as close to privacy as they were probably going to get. Numa spoke it, and Sthenno understood it, but Nabor and most of the other pilots in the rec room didn’t.

“She’s your cousin,” Doriah said. “She didn’t ask for any of this –”

“Neither did I!” Ojeda snapped, though she kept her voice low. “She’s an Imperial officer, Doriah. I know Imperial officers. Probably better than anyone on this ship.”

“She deserted,” Doriah hissed at her, fighting down déjà vu.

Ojeda shook her head, defensive and apparently made weary by Doriah’s bullheadedness. “That doesn’t change anything. You don’t know the Imperial service, Doriah. I do.”

“It’s _Hera_. She was brainwashed, she –”

“When she was fourteen. That was ten years ago.” Ojeda crossed her arms and looked away, then settled her shoulders and turned back to him. “People change, Doriah. And where she was wasn’t like where we were. The people who prosper in the Imperial service aren’t the kind of people you want to be around, and Hera was very, very good at it.”

“I thought you said you never met her there.”

Her eyes narrowed. “No, but I heard about her. I heard a lot about her, because men who sleep with the only Twi’lek at the Lake House usually actually want to sleep with the only Twi’lek in the ISB.”

“So what?” Doriah demanded. “You think she should have slept with them?”

Ojeda hissed at him, her lekku twitching. “I couldn’t care less who she slept with there, except that I know who she _did_ sleep with – _what_ she slept with. That’s not important, though, Doriah, gods – this is just like when we were children. It’s always about Hera.”

“What is this about if not Hera?” Doriah said, baffled.

“You took me away from Naboo because you didn’t want me to be around Imperial officers,” Ojeda said stiffly. “Well, I’m telling you now that I don’t want to be around _this_ Imperial officer. Even if she turned her coat, she’s still an Imperial. What the Empire does to their cadets, to their officers – you can’t walk away from that.”

“She’s our cousin!”

“She’s an Imperial officer! And not just any Imperial, but ISB. Do you have _any_ idea what that means? What ISB agents do? I do.” Ojeda shook her head. “And I don’t want to be around someone who’s done those things, not anymore. Not as long as I have a choice.” As Doriah drew his breath to speak, she added swiftly, “And I do, don’t I? Have a choice?”

He let his breath out. “Of course. But, Ojeda –”

“Then that’s my choice,” she said firmly, allowing, “Maybe someday – but she’s an Imperial. You don’t understand what that means.”

“I’ve been fighting them for six years,” he said, low-voiced.

“I’ve been fucking them for ten.” As he grimaced, she added, “I’d like to think otherwise, Doriah, but trust me, I know Imperial officers and I know ISB agents better than anyone else. If Hera was really different from the rest of them then she wouldn’t have lasted that long in the Bureau.”

Doriah frowned. “You don’t know that.”

“Yes, I do.” Ojeda reached out and squeezed his hands. “I’m sorry. But it’s true.”

She released him and swept the curtain back, stepping out into the rec room. Everyone else self-consciously looked away; Doriah tried again to remember which of them understood Basic well enough to have gotten the gist of the conversation – it didn’t help that the words “Imperial” and “ISB” were the same in both Basic and Twi’leki.

Ojeda had barely gotten out of the way before Numa swept in, grabbed Doriah’s elbow, and towed him out of the room and into the corridor.

“Tell me the rumors aren’t true,” she hissed at him.

“You’re going to need to be a little more specific about what rumors those are,” Doriah hissed back. “All anyone in this fleet ever does is gossip.”

“That that ship we escorted in yesterday is Imperial!”

“No –” Doriah said, but he had hesitated an instant too long; Numa flushed a full shade darker than her usual teal and looked like she was considering murdering him herself.

“What about the rest?” she demanded. “That he’s going to announce some outsider as his heir?”

“That outsider is his daughter and my cousin,” Doriah snapped.

“And an Imperial collaborator?”

“It isn’t like that!”

“It’s not a difficult question!”

“It’s not that simple!”

“It’s a yes or no question!”

Doriah gritted his teeth. “My uncle hasn’t declared an heir in ten years, what makes you think he’s going to start now?”

Numa’s hand was still on his arm, and her grip tightened enough to be painful. “You know I speak Basic, right?

“Yeah, but – Numa, it’s not what it sounded like.”

This time Numa went pale. “Doriah –”

Doriah took her by the shoulders. “It’s not what it sounded like,” he repeated, trying to make his voice as calm as possible. “And the rumors aren’t true, whatever they are. Did any of the others –”

She gave him a disgusted look. “What do you think?”

Doriah resisted the urge to swear. “It’s not what it sounded like,” he said again.

“You’re a damn curiate, so I shouldn’t have to tell you this, but this clan will not accept an outsider and it will not accept a collaborator,” Numa hissed.

“I’m not a curiate,” Doriah reminded her.

“Don’t change the subject,” she snapped. “I’m serious, Doriah.”

“So am I. You know my uncle, all right? You know he wouldn’t do something like that.” If nothing else, Doriah was pretty sure Cham wouldn’t spring it on Hera without warning, especially given that her response right now was likely to be a flat refusal.

Numa stared at him for a long moment, then nodded reluctantly. “All right.” She didn’t sound convinced, though.

*

Sabine was used to spending most of her time on the _Ghost_ , but usually when that happened they were in deep space and there was nowhere to go that didn’t involve a spacesuit and an airlock. Being docked made their enforced idleness almost unbearable, especially when she could look out the viewport and see a busy hangar deck just a few meters away from them – well, more than a few; the Twi’leks were still avoiding the immediate area of the _Ghost_. It didn’t help her nerves that they could all see her watching them through the viewport, too, since the _Ghost_ ’s viewports weren’t tinted.

“I feel like I’m in a zoo,” Zeb muttered, coming up beside her where she was standing in the cockpit, her arms crossed. “On the wrong side of one, too.”

So it wasn’t just her. Sabine picked at the flaking paint on her left elbow guard and said, “I know Hera said not to go anywhere alone, but she didn’t say not to leave the _Ghost_ , right?”

He flicked a wary glance at her. “You really want to go out there?”

“It beats being stuck in here.” Her mind made up, Sabine headed for the ladder down to the hold. Zeb trailed after her, still looking doubtful about this prospect.

The ramp was up, but Ezra was down there already, poking experimentally at Kanan’s speeder bike while Chopper made disparaging comments from beside him. They both looked up as Sabine dropped to the floor.

“I’m going to go make some new friends,” she said. “Care to come along?”

“Uh, they’re not very friendly,” Ezra said. He stepped back and bumped into the bike as they all stared at him, adding, “What? I was here for a while before you guys showed up.”

“Kid, don’t take this the wrong way, but maybe you’re not really a people person,” Zeb offered.

Ezra crossed his arms, his expression mulish. “Hey, you don’t know me. I can be a people person.”

Sabine didn’t have the energy for this. She ignored them and tapped the control for the hatch. Chopper, apparently deciding that the boys’ bickering wasn’t very interesting either – he only liked it when he was involved in the fighting – followed her as Sabine descended the ramp.

She looked around the hangar with interest. There were more people here now than there had been when she had been out here yesterday, though even during the night cycle it had never been completely deserted. The guards near the _Ghost_ were all staring at her; the shift had changed since the last time Sabine had been out here, and none of them were looked familiar. She waved at them; self-conscious, they all immediately looked away.

Some of the Twi’leks working on the starfighters had already noticed her appearance. Sabine squared her shoulders, feeling the pressure of their attention, and walked over to them, Chopper rolling along beside her.

“Hey,” she said in Twi’leki, hoping she wasn’t mangling the language too terribly. “I’m Sabine Wren. What are you working on?”

Given that there was a hole the size of Chopper punched through the left S-foil of the old V-19 Torrent starfighter in front of her, it wasn’t hard to figure out, but Sabine wasn’t great at small talk. Especially in a language that she hadn’t had occasion to practice with a real person, instead of a holo tutorial.

The two Twi’leks standing by the starfighter looked at each other, the pause long enough to make Sabine wonder if she had managed to insult them rather than ask a question. Then a Rodian woman ducked out from behind the Torrent’s other S-foil, jumped to the floor, and said, “We’re replacing the wiring on the laser cannons.”

She said the Twi’leki words slowly and clearly enough for Sabine to make them out, though her accent was a little different from the tutorials.

His voice low, one of the Twi’leks said, “Kaylani, you shouldn’t speak to her –”

“I can speak to her if I want, Zabo,” the Rodian shot back. She turned to Sabine again and said, “I’m Kaylani. This is Zabo and Tlar.”

The Twi’lek who hadn’t spoken before, a round-cheeked teenage boy whose skin was so dark blue it was nearly black, gave Sabine a small wave. Zabo just crossed his arms and scowled.

“She’s an Imperial,” he said.

Sabine tensed, but managed not to say anything beyond, “Do I look like an Imperial?”

He sneered. “You’re human.”

She rolled her eyes. “Not all humans work for the Empire, you know. Most don’t.”

“You’re a Mandalorian, aren’t you?” Tlar said.

Sabine nodded. “Yeah.”

He looked pleased. “Like in the holos.”

“Well, not exactly like the holos,” Sabine said, since she had seen a lot of those holos and they were pretty misleading, to say the least. “But sure, more or less like the holos.”

“Do you really eat the hearts of your enemies?” Tlar said eagerly, which made Zabo and Kaylani both stare at him.

“Uh, we haven’t done that for about a thousand years,” Sabine said. “The Old Republic Senate made us stop when we joined the Republic, when there was still a Republic.”

There was a persistent rumor that some clans still did so; the only thing Mandalorians loved more than their armor and weapons was tradition. Sabine was certain that Clan Wren wasn’t one of them, though, since she had asked her mother that same question when she had been four. Ursa Wren wasn’t the kind of person to beat around the bush, so if they did, Sabine would have known about it. And probably been fed slices of human hearts while still in the cradle, knowing her mother.

Tlar looked disappointed. Zabo elbowed him and muttered, “You know that that’s what the Empire says about us.”

Yeah, back in the day the Republic had called Mandalorians savages too; Sabine had read enough military history to know that it was common propaganda.

Kaylani was staring at her with eyes that were wide even for a Rodian. “That’s true?”

“Not _recently_.” Sabine decided she should change the subject from cannibalism and said, “So what’s wrong with the wiring there? Anything I can help with?”

Zabo looked stubborn. “We’re not going to let some mercenary –”

Kaylani glared at him. “It’s my ‘fighter, not yours.” To Sabine, she said, “We’ve mostly got it handled, except we need an ion coupler and there isn’t one to be had on the _Hope_ for love or money. We’re trying to get one from another ship, but if we can’t do that then we’ll have to jury-rig something.”

“We should have one,” Sabine said. She glanced down at Chopper, who grumbled at her in response. “It’s probably with the extras in the engine room. And bring the kid back with you, he should learn something for once in his life.”

Kaylani hesitated. “What do you want for it?”

Sabine shrugged. “I’m just trying to help.”

Bristling, Zabo said, “We don’t need –”

“We need the coupler!” Tlar hissed at him. “And the Syndulla was over there earlier, so they have to be friends.”

“You’re an idiot,” Zabo hissed back.

“You know I can hear you, right?” Sabine said. “It’s just an ion coupler. You can get them by the bucket in any spaceport.”

Kaylani laughed, a short, sharp sound. “We don’t exactly get out to a lot of spaceports.”

“So take the coupler,” Sabine said, lifting a shoulder in a shrug. Chopper must have taken that as acknowledgment, because he was already rolling off in the direction of the _Ghost_ when Sabine looked around for him.

There was an awkward moment of silence while Sabine studied the hole in the Torrent’s wing, then Kaylani said tentatively, “You said you weren’t a mercenary, so…you’re a rebel? Like Phoenix Squadron?”

Phoenix Squadron was a small rebel cell that Sabine remembered from the ISB reports on it. “Not really,” she said. “We’re not –” She hesitated, then admitted, “We’re not really anything right now.”

“But you’re friends of the Syndulla?” Kaylani pressed, curious.

This was feeling more and more like Mandalore with every passing minute, which Sabine hadn’t really expected. The words were different, and the scale, but it all came down to the same things. It was weirdly disconcerting.

She was saved from having to answer by Chopper’s return, accompanied by Ezra this time. “I know how to do things,” he said pointedly.

Sabine ignored him and took the coupler from Chopper, holding it out to Kaylani. “Is this the right one?”

Kaylani and Tlar both inspected it, while Zabo leaned over Tlar’s shoulder. “I think so,” Kaylani said. She hesitated briefly. “I wouldn’t mind having an extra pair of hands. Or two.”

Sabine grinned. “I thought you’d never ask.”

*

Despite her best intentions to the contrary, Hera found herself reluctantly fascinated by the _Forlorn Hope_. Most Separatist warships had been scuttled by the Imperial Navy a long time ago, but they retained a few for training purposes, and Hera had been on one of those back when she had been an Academy cadet. It gave her a standard to compare the _Forlorn Hope_ against, though it was increasingly obvious the two ships had nothing in common except their hulls. Possibly their engines and guns as well, though Hera didn’t miss the fact that her father didn’t take her through any of the ship’s working areas.

There were Twi’leks everywhere.

That shouldn’t have been a surprise given the nature of the fleet, but somehow it was, and Hera didn’t know how to deal either with that or the fact that it shook her so badly. She had been to Twi’lek enclaves on several occasions in the past ten years, but most of her time had been spent surrounded by humans. In a distant way Hera didn’t feel entirely like a Twi’lek anymore, but she couldn’t be anything else, either. All of that came rushing back, walking around the _Hope_ ’s decks with her father while he tried to introduce her to second, third, and fourth cousins she didn’t remember. Hera’s memory of the clan was just good enough to realize that there were gaps in the families, empty places where people had died over the years. Or been at the colony.

Her increasing agitation eventually became evident to her father, despite her attempts to keep as calm and detached as she would have done back at the ISB. It shouldn’t have been difficult, considering that Hera had spent most of her life putting on that masquerade, but somehow her father knew immediately.

He drew her aside into a small room that seemed to be serving as a library, given the neat shelves of holodiscs filling the space. Going by the marks left on the ceiling, Hera thought that it had probably once been a storage area for battle droid parts.

“What is it?” Cham asked her, resting a hand on her shoulder. “Something is wrong.”

Hera stared at him blankly, the words _everything is wrong_ on the tip of her tongue before she swallowed them. Instead, she said, “How can you tell?”

“Your lekku,” he said. He released her when she tried to shrug his hand aside, but kept staring worriedly at her. “Your signals are – not quite right, but I’m getting used to them.”

Hera crossed her arms over her chest and half-turned away, staring at the glowing racks of holodiscs. The title on the spine of the nearest read _A True and Natural History of the Mysterious Purgill_ , which Hera had read when she had been a child and remembered as being mostly romanticized fiction.

“Oh,” she said. “I forgot about that.”

“You have spent a great deal of time with humans,” her father said cautiously.

“Kanan can read lekku,” Hera pointed out. It was true, though neither he nor she was certain how much of it was actually reading the minute movements of her headtails and how much of it had to do with the Force. After a moment, she added, “Most humans don’t think about it.”

Her father inclined his head. Hera remembered to look at his lekku this time, but she couldn’t remember what they were signaling, or if it meant anything at all.

She licked her lips, looking aside again, and confessed, “I’m not…very good around other Twi’leks.”

She flicked a glance back at her father in time to see his brow knit in concern. “The Empire –”

“It’s not the Empire, it’s me,” Hera said. “The ISB recruited me because they wanted someone who could walk into a Twi’lek enclave without being noticed.” She bit her lip again. “Not someone who can’t walk into one without having a panic attack.”

He blinked slowly. “But you’ve been to the enclaves?”

“A few times. Only on ops.”

The enclaves were Twi’lek neighborhoods on various worlds, usually made up of second- or third- generation immigrants. There were several on Naboo, including one in Theed; Hera had nearly blown her qualifying exams there. She might look like she belonged, but she couldn’t make herself feel it, and that always showed. Kanan, comfortable everywhere, could manage it better than she could even if he was human.

“The Empire did this to you,” her father said, apparently on firmer ground now. He touched her elbow and Hera stepped aside again.

“The Empire didn’t do it to me, I did it to myself.”

This time it was her father who looked away.

_I can’t stay here_ , Hera thought at him, but she didn’t want to say it yet because he hadn’t brought up the possibility and she didn’t want to encourage him. _I can’t stay here, I don’t belong here, I never will._

He had to know that. Cham Syndulla was many things, and Hera was even willing to be flattering about some of them, but he wasn’t stupid.

Eventually, he said, “You haven’t seen your cousins yet.”

Relieved by the change in subject, Hera said, “I’ve seen Doriah.”

“Xiaan and Ojeda, I mean. Or your aunt Sinthya and uncle Themarsa.”

Wearily, Hera said, “I saw Sinthya on Thyferra, when you shot Kanan.”

Her father’s mouth thinned. Belatedly, Hera remembered what else had happened on Thyferra, but his shoulder seemed to be fine now and it wasn’t as though bacta couldn’t take care of a simple blaster wound like that one.

“I was not the one who pulled the trigger,” her father said slowly.

_But you would have been, if you were a better shot with a sniper rifle_ , Hera thought. “You gave the order.”

Her father acknowledged this with what Hera recognized after a moment was a flick of his lekku. Unspoken were the words _and I would do it again._

Hera looked down.

The door slid open to admit a pair of Twi’lek girls in their early teens. Their chatter stopped abruptly as they recognized Cham, and one of them said, “Syndulla –”

“It’s all right,” Cham said as they made to go. “We’re just leaving.”

Hera trailed after him as the girls stepped aside to clear their way to the door, watching her father worshipfully. Hera they regarded with wide-eyed curiosity, recognizing her caste markings but not her face.

“How many people are on this ship?” she asked after they had stepped back out into the corridor.

Her father eyed her thoughtfully. “The ISB does not know that?”

“Just an estimate.”

He was silent for a moment, long enough for Hera to wonder if he trusted her with that information. She wouldn’t blame him if he didn’t. Then he said, “Six thousand, four hundred, and thirty-two on this ship. Forty-three thousand seven hundred eighty-six in the fleet, as of this morning’s count, though not all the other clan heads give accurate numbers.” He hesitated, then added, “About a third of those are Syndulla, another third allied clans.”

That Hera had known, though she didn’t say as much. She hadn’t bothered to identify the difference between long-term allies and allies of convenience to the ISB during the last briefing before their attack on the fleet, thinking uneasily back on every time she had been dragged out of her Academy classes when something had happened on Ryloth. Agent Kallus hadn’t asked, so she hadn’t offered. Besides, she hadn’t seen how it mattered anyway.

“There are only six other people who came back from the colony,” her father said after a moment. He slid her a hopeful look. “Seven, counting you.”

Four of them Hera’s immediate family. She wondered briefly who the other two were, but couldn’t bring herself to ask. There had been people from a lot of clans at the colony; they probably weren’t even Syndullas.

“Did you ever –” He hesitated on the question.

Hera knew what he meant. “Once. During an exercise when I was in the ISB Academy. It’s not in the ISB records.” And trying to look it up had gotten her a visit from Internal Affairs that had put her in a cell for two days, then a lecture from Agent Beneke about the importance of letting the past go and moving on after she had been released.

As her father frowned, she added, “The attack on the colony was what we – the Empire, I mean – calls a black box operation. It doesn’t officially exist. If there are ISB records relating to it – and I’ve never been certain that there are, even though I’ve been on some of those ops – then they’re stored off-site at one of the Bureau black bases, but they’re not in the ISB mainframe on Naboo.” She went on a few more steps before she realized that her father had stopped, then turned back. “Why?”

“Xiaan has been looking for those records in the files we copied from the ISB mainframe,” her father said.

Hera blinked at him. “When were you –”

It took her a moment to realize that he meant the day he had murdered Agent Beneke. It had never even crossed her mind that her father had been in ISB HQ for a reason other than to kill him.

“Oh,” she said. “Well – the records aren’t there. And I don’t know what happened to them – to any of them.” She glanced down, studying the battered metal deck beneath her feet. “I didn’t want to know.”

Her father didn’t respond to that.

They went on in silence, passing Twi’leks of all colors as they made their way through the corridors. Hera tried to look straight ahead, forcing herself to ignore the certainty that they were all staring at her and wondering what this stranger with the Syndulla curiate caste markings on her lekku was doing with the clan head.

A few people called out greetings to her father or stopped him to exchange a few words. Some of them shot Hera curious looks as well, but none of them asked who she was or what she was doing here; she had to admit that with six thousand beings onboard, it wasn’t impossible that many people wouldn’t know everyone else. On the other hand, there would only be a few Syndulla curiates, and they would be well-known.

It took her several minutes to realize that her father no longer seemed to be taking her on a tour of the ship, and instead was leading her back up through the residential levels to the Residency. Or the brig, or maybe the hangars; Hera’s grasp on the ship’s altered internal structure wasn’t as good as she would like it to be.

“Where are we going?” she asked, fighting down the sudden stab of fear that the answer was going to be _to see your partner executed_. Her father hadn’t mentioned Kanan at all; Hera was of the opinion that Cham was trying to pretend he didn’t exist.

Her father paused and waited for her to catch up with him; Hera had been walking a little behind, so that people who wanted to speak to him could do so without her listening in. “To breakfast with your mother and cousins,” he said, then hesitated. “If you don’t want –”

Hera didn’t, particularly, but she couldn’t think of a good way to say as much. She just made a non-committal noise and kept following her father.

The frigate wasn’t as big as a star destroyer, but it was still sizable enough that it took them some time to reach the Residency. Hera had been too distracted the previous day to pay any attention to the nameplates on the doors; this time she glanced at them, checking the names off against her mental list of close relatives. There were more gaps than there should have been, which might have meant that they were on other ships. More likely it meant that they were dead. 

They went past her parents’ staterooms to an unmarked door at the end of the corridor. Before her father could reach for the control panel, the door slid open and a pink-skinned Twi’lek girl rushed out, skidding to a stop when she saw them.

“Hera,” she breathed, paused for barely an instant – not long enough for Hera to respond – then flung herself at Hera.

Hera staggered back but caught her, wrapping her arms around Xiaan’s shoulders. Xiaan was clinging to her with desperate strength, her face pressed against Hera’s shoulder and her lekku shivering a little with emotion. She was mumbling, “Hera, Hera, Hera,” her hands fisted in the back of Hera’s shirt like she would never let go.

Doriah appeared in the doorway behind her. “Xi, let her breathe.”

Xiaan shook her head, but her grip loosened a little. After a moment she pulled back enough to turn her face up to Hera’s, her eyes bright with unshed tears.

“You grew up,” Hera said; the first thing that came to mind.

“That happens,” Xiaan said, giving Hera the ghost of a smile, then hugged her again.

She felt delicate and fragile beneath Hera’s hands, like she would shatter if Hera put too much pressure on her, and Hera found herself leaning down a little to hug her properly; Xiaan hadn’t attained the height that was usual for curiate Syndullas. Against her ear, Xiaan whispered, “I missed you. I’m glad you’re all right, I was really worried.”

“I missed you too,” Hera said, then untangled herself gently so that she could stand back and get a better look at her cousin.

It seemed impossible that the last time Hera had seen her Xiaan hadn’t yet been out of the nursery. She had grown into a slight teenager with huge blue eyes and elaborate caste markings decorating her lekku and arms, going from her bare shoulders all the way down past her wrists; the latter must have been new, since her lekku markings had still been fresh when they had gone to the colony.

The last time Hera had seen Xiaan, she had been screaming uncontrollably, a tiny child in binders kneeling in the colony’s forum as Hera had been dragged away. It was the last time Hera, or anyone else, had seen her cousins all together.

Some of the realization must have shown on her face, because Xiaan reached up to hug her again. Doriah came over to put one hand on Hera’s shoulder and one hand on Xiaan’s, and Xiaan leaned comfortably against him, watching Hera like she still couldn’t believe that she was here.

Hera’s mother had come out at some point, standing close enough to Cham that Hera saw their fingers brush. Alecto looked like she was on the verge of tears.

Hera glanced aside so that she didn’t have to look at her mother, uncomfortable with the show of affection.

“Where’s Ojeda?” her father asked.

Doriah took a deep breath and stepped back, bracing his shoulders to deliver the unwelcome news. “She didn’t want to come.”

Cham blinked. “Why not?”

Doriah’s gaze slid towards Hera.

Cham’s brow knit in surprise. “That is not fair.”

“She’ll change her mind,” Doriah said, sounding a little awkward. “Once she realizes…” He let the words trail off, glancing at Hera again.

Hera hadn’t seen Ojeda in ten years, but she could guess what had been going through Ojeda’s head. In her place, Hera wouldn’t want to be around any Imperial officers either, family or not. And Hera might have deserted, but she hadn’t deserted because she had lost faith in the Empire. In some essential part of her, she was still as much an Imperial officer as any of her former colleagues. She would probably always be.

She let Doriah and Xiaan urge her into the room and into the excited embrace of her parents’ cousins, which on the _Forlorn Hope_ turned out to be just Sinthya and Themarsa; the others were apparently on other ships at the moment. Or dead. Hera didn’t want to ask about the names she hadn’t heard.

The room looked like it was normally used as a lounge of some sort, but for the occasion the couches in it had been pushed against the walls, leaving the big low table in the center of the room. Hera sat down on one of the floor cushions arranged around it, studying the food laid out with vague curiosity. There must have been a ship – probably more than one – in the fleet that had the facilities to grow crops, maybe even keep animals. The _Forlorn Hope_ was big enough that it seemed likely to have hydroponics somewhere onboard, although her father hadn’t shown them to her during the tour.

She recognized the tapestries on the walls and the thick carpet on the floor as coming from the Syndulla estate back on Ryloth, making the effect disconcerting. It felt like she had gone back in time.

For a moment all Hera wanted to do was scream. She sat perched on the cushion, frozen and staring at the familiar etched glass cups in their silver holders, with the half-familiar scent of her childhood threatening to overwhelm her the way it did every time she had walked into a Twi’lek enclave.

She couldn’t be here. She needed to not be here.

She was trying to force her limbs to move, her mind stumbling uselessly over an excuse, when the door slid open and another Twi’lek slammed into the room.

“Have you lost your damn mind?” she snarled at Hera’s father, who was already getting to his feet.

He put his hands out. “Mishaan, this is not the place –”

“You have gone too far!”

Cham seized her by the arm and propelled her out of the room into the corridor. “We will _not_ have this discussion here,” he snapped, just before the door shut behind them.

Hera stared after them. If nothing else, the interruption had broken her out of her panicked trance.

*

Mishaan pulled free of Cham’s hand before the door had shut behind them. She was practically vibrating with furious energy, her lekku so stiff that they looked like they could shatter.

“You go too far,” she spat. “Bringing Imperials onto this ship, onto my ship? Bringing a traitor here, a woman who has borne arms against her own people?”

Cham put his hands up. “Hera has never –”

“She is an Imperial officer!” Mishaan shouted. “She and that human down in the cells and whoever else is on that ship of theirs! The only place they have in this fleet or on this ship is in front of a firing squad!”

Cham took a step towards her and Mishaan fell back briefly, then stood her ground. “You are speaking of my daughter,” Cham said.

She had to tilt her head back to meet his gaze, her lekku trembling. “I am speaking of a traitor to the Twi’lek species.”

“She was a fourteen-year-old child who had no choice.”

“She’s a grown woman now. And there is always a choice. I chose to leave my family so I could fight for the future of the Twi’lek people, of our people! She chose to join with those who seek to enslave and murder us, her own people!”

Cham wasn’t aware that he had raised his hand until he saw Mishaan flinch.

He unclenched his fist with an effort and lowered his hand. Mishaan swallowed, but didn’t back down, her jaw clenched as tight as her lekku.

“I will not have that traitor on my ship,” she said. “You might be Syndulla, but I am not your clan and I don’t have to scrape and bow at your feet. I will not have her or any other Imperial on my ship and if I have to drag her off by her lekku, then so be it.”

“If you lay a hand on my daughter, Secura or not, it will be the last thing you do,” Cham said steadily. “And you forget that the _Forlorn Hope_ is not your ship. It is mine. You forget yourself.”

“No, you do. You forget that you are more than just Syndulla, you forget that you are more than your clan and your family, you are this fleet, you are Ryloth! And you would put all that at risk for a traitor? For a woman that sold out her own species to the Empire? At least my family had their own people for an excuse! At least my family had Ryloth! Your daughter had nothing but her own skin! And you’re a fool if you believe otherwise for even an instant.”

“You would be wise to stop talking now,” Cham said, barely managing to keep his voice calm.

Mishaan seized his arm, her voice low and certain. “She is a traitor,” she said. “She will destroy this fleet and everyone in it. People have already died for her, and if you continue on this course, then there will be more bloodshed. You are so certain that you and your family alone are the Empire’s victims that you overlook everything they have cost our people – _our people!_ – in favor of what you think you’ve gotten back? You think it’s coincidence that that Imperial whore is here now? It’s a trick and you’re a fool to fall for it –”

Cham caught her wrist in his hand, feeling the fragile bones beneath his fingers. “Get off my ship, Mishaan Secura.”

The words took her by surprise. “What?”

“Get off my ship,” Cham repeated, “or be thrown off. It is your choice.” He released her and started to turn away, reaching for his comlink. “Go where you want, but you are no longer welcome on any Syndulla ship in the fleet.”

He raised his comlink and said, “General Syndulla to the officer of the deck. Mishaan Secura is no longer in command –”

At close range, the blaster shots were nothing but screaming white noise that filled his whole world. Pain blossomed beneath his breastbone as his fingers spasmed, releasing the comlink, and then everything went black.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For new readers, I do daily progress reports over on Tumblr, under the tag "[daily fic snippet](http://bedlamsbard.tumblr.com/tagged/daily-fic-snippet)," if you want to keep track of what I'm working on or get a hint of what's happening in the next chapter or two. I'm currently about a chapter and a half ahead.


	27. Lockdown

_Ten years ago_   
_Somewhere in the Outer Rim_

“What do you think?”

There was a hopeful note to Cham’s voice that made Alecto’s lekku twitch, but she bit back her reflexive response. “It’s a Separatist warship,” she said after a moment; the most neutral thing she could think of.

“Yes,” he said cautiously. From his expression he hadn’t missed her hesitation and was waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Since no one else seemed to be capable of it, Alecto decided to throw it at him. “It’s a Separatist warship,” she repeated. “Like the ones that blockaded Ryloth during the war. Like the ones that launched the droid bombers that destroyed our villages and killed our people – that destroyed _my_ village, that killed _my_ family. Maybe the same one.”

Cham blinked once, slow, but he didn’t look surprised by her words. “This ship was built after the occupation had already ended,” he said. “I wondered that myself. The seller said –”

“The seller wants an extremely large amount of money from you; he’ll tell you whatever he thinks you want to hear,” Alecto snapped. It was an amount of money so large that she couldn’t even comprehend it, enough to buy her entire village and everyone in it several times over. It was probably enough to buy an Imperial senator or two, if it had been worth doing so. It wasn’t; they were all useless.

Cham hadn’t even blinked when the seller, a grubby Nautolan whom Alecto suspected had ties to Black Sun or one of the other crime syndicates, had named the price. He hadn’t even tried to haggle it down by a million or five, though to be honest Alecto wasn’t certain that he actually knew how to haggle. His sisters had been the ones who handled the family fortune, the estate, and the Syndulla business interests. Cham’s prerogative had been the clan and the Curia.

The clan, the Curia, and then the war. And then just the war.

“Be that as it may,” Cham said, “there are no other capital warships for sale anywhere else in the galaxy. This is the only one. There are other interested parties –”

“Then let them have it,” Alecto said. “What do you need a warship for, Cham?” She rapped her knuckles against the bulkhead nearest her and went on, “This tin can was never meant to last more than a few years. Whatever refits have been done can’t have extended its lifespan more than a decade, maybe two – and that’s only if the entire hull’s been replaced. It can’t go toe to toe with an Imperial star destroyer. They didn’t even last that long against Republic star destroyers, and the new ones are bigger, better, more heavily armored and gunned – the Empire will blow you out of Ryloth’s orbit before you can get a shot off.”

“We will not be at Ryloth,” Cham said.

She snorted. “Don’t tell me you mean to attack the Empire head-on. Not with this barge.”

He was watching her warily. “I do not mean that, either.”

Alecto stepped away from the bulkhead and crossed her arms. “So if you’re not going to fight with it,” she said, “what do you need a warship for? You might have a lot of money, but I’m sure you have better things to do with it.”

“It’s your money as well.”

“It’s not my inherited fortune and I’m not the one running around the galaxy spending it. And you haven’t answered my question.”

Her husband looked at her for a long moment. Then he moved closer to her, lowering his voice like he was trying to keep his next words a secret just between the two of them. Maybe he was; Alecto wouldn’t put it past the ship’s current owner to be running security cams just in case a customer wanted to steal it. Alecto had considered that option herself; it would be substantially cheaper than the millions of credits Cham had laid on the table. She just still didn’t see the point.

“We are leaving Ryloth,” Cham said.

Alecto stared at him. “What?”

“We are leaving Ryloth,” he repeated. “The resistance, the families, whoever will come –”

“To do _what_?”

“To draw the Emperor’s eye from the planet,” he said. “I will not bring down Palpatine’s vengeance on innocents again, which means –”

“You can’t do that!” As his brows went up, Alecto clarified, “You can’t protect anyone from the Empire, Cham. Not Ryloth, not the clan, not even your damn family. Your bright idea is to run away?”

“I am not running,” Cham said firmly, but Alecto had seen the muscle in his jaw twitch when she mentioned his family. “If I can give him a target he can’t resist, then he will leave Ryloth alone.”

“The Empire will never leave Ryloth alone!” Alecto snapped. “They want the spice in our earth more than they want you – and if they really wanted you, you think you’d be standing here right now? You still have a pulse, Cham! You still have your lands, your clan, your fortune – if Palpatine wanted you, he’d have you.”

“Palpatine doesn’t want me,” Cham said. “Not dead or in prison, anyway. He has had every opportunity.”

“Has he?” Alecto said. “Maybe he’s just waiting for the right offer.”

Cham frowned, his brows furrowing. “What do you mean?”

Alecto took a step closer to him. “He has our daughter, Cham. Our _baby_. Do you know what they do to pretty Twi’lek girls in the Empire? What they’re probably doing to Hera right now?”

A muscle in Cham’s jaw jumped. “I know.”

“Then you should have gone on your knees before the Emperor to get her back,” Alecto snapped. “Not – this. Whatever _this_ is.”

“You think I didn’t?” Cham said, his voice soft.

“I don’t think you’d go to the Emperor for anything,” Alecto said. “Not even our child.”

“I went to Moff Mors,” Cham said. “After I had exhausted all my resources, called up every favor I had, spent a fortune –”

“Not much of one if you can still afford this.”

“– I went to Delian Mors and offered her anything she wanted in exchange for Hera, and you, and my sister, and the other children. And then just for you and Hera. If they wanted me, they could have had me. If they wanted Free Ryloth, I would have given it to them on a platter.”

“If you’re trying to impress me –”

“After twenty years I think we know each other better than that,” Cham said.

“Do we?” Alecto asked. “Do we really? If I had thought for even an instant that you would do what you did, I would never have left Ryloth. But I trusted you, even when I didn’t agree with you, and now our daughter is gone. My sister’s children are gone. Your sisters and their children are gone. Everyone at the colony is gone. Because of you, Cham. You did that.”

“I have been trying to make that right –”

“You can’t,” Alecto said.

Cham shut his eyes briefly. “I know.”

Alecto drew in her breath and looked away, letting her gaze focus on an irregularity in the nearest bulkhead where a panel had been replaced. Finally, when she trusted herself to speak again even if she didn’t trust herself to look at him, she asked, “What did Moff Mors say?”

“She said that what happened at the colony was a pirate attack. No Imperial involvement; the Empire doesn’t do things like that.”

Alecto snorted softly.

“She said that I was grief-stricken, looking for someone to blame, and because of that she would forgive my – confession, for crimes that I obviously hadn’t committed. She warned me not to repeat that to someone who might not be as understanding as she was; she’d hate to see an innocent man see the inside of a prison cell. It wouldn’t do for a curiate politician and a war hero like me to be lumped in with Twi’lek supremacist terrorists, after all.” There was an ironic curl at the end of the words, Cham’s bitterness dripping from them like poison.

Alecto finally looked back at him. “She actually claimed the Empire wasn’t responsible? I _saw_ them! Darth Vader was there! That ISB officer who – who –” _You want the girl?_ Darth Vader had said to him. _Take her now._

Alecto dreamed about that every night.

Her voice stiff, she whispered, “The Empire was there.”

“I know,” Cham said. “We got there – maybe six hours later, at most. Many of the buildings were still on fire. There were downed V-wings, AT-DPs – no stormtroopers, though. When we went back a few days afterwards, they were gone. They had made it look as though it really was pirates who had attacked.”

“Why?” Alecto asked. “Why would they do that? Just for you? Did they take us – did they take my child – just for you, Cham?”

Cham just shook his head. “I don’t know. I don’t know what they gain from doing that. But I will not let it happen again. That is why we are leaving Ryloth, Alecto. So no one else suffers for my sins.”

“That’s a nice sentiment, Cham,” Alecto said. “But that’s not how these things work.”

“I will make it so,” Cham said, and the sheer determination in his voice made Alecto look away. His light touch on her shoulders brought her gaze back to him. Meeting her eyes, he said, “This is a good thing. We’ll fight this war on our terms, not on the Empire’s.”

“‘We’?” Alecto repeated.

“We,” Cham said, and then hesitated. “You will come, won’t you?”

“I –” She drew in her breath, wondering how much of a choice she had. There were no Imperial warrants out on her, but she didn’t know how long she would last on Ryloth alone once word of Cham’s aspiring fleet got out. Alecto didn’t see much point in it, either. She wasn’t a curiate; she wasn’t tied to the land the way Cham’s family was supposed to be. “Yes,” she said. “I’ll come.”

Cham closed his eyes briefly in relief, then leaned forward to press a kiss to her forehead. “This ship is yours if you want it,” he said. “Captain Syndulla?”

“No,” Alecto said. “I’ll come with you. I’ll fight beside you. But I’m not you, Cham. I don’t want to command anything or lead anyone. And I definitely don’t want this ship.”

*

_Present day_

Hera heard the blaster shots and was on her feet before she was even consciously aware of them, her own blaster already in hand as she slammed her other palm against the door control.

For long seconds she couldn’t understand what she was looking at.

“Daddy?” she whispered, then her mother shoved past her to slam Mishaan Secura into the opposite wall. Captain Secura didn’t even get a chance to raise her blaster before Alecto punched her in the jaw hard enough to snap her head sideways. The blaster went flying out of her hand, skidding across the floor.

Doriah was already at Hera’s shoulder. He bellowed, “ _Themarsa!_ ” and threw himself past her, hitting the deck beside her father’s body with a thump that echoed hollowly through the corridor. He put a hand on Cham’s shoulder, avoiding the burned and blackened mess of his back. A close-range shot, Hera identified automatically. Nearly point blank.

“Daddy?” she said again, trying to make sense of what she was looking at. It shouldn’t have been difficult, but somehow she just couldn’t put it together in any way that made sense. Everything seemed to move in frozen slices of time – her mother hitting Captain Secura over and over again, Doriah shouting for Themarsa, her uncle shoving Hera gracelessly out of the way to join Doriah –

Xiaan grabbed Hera’s arm.

The shock of it knocked Hera back to the present. She shoved her blaster back into its holster and wrapped her arms around Xiaan, pulling her cousin against her so that she didn’t have to see. Sinthya must have pushed past her at some point, because she was out in the corridor too, her hands on Alecto’s shoulders as she tried to drag her cousin off Mishaan Secura.

Footsteps pounded down the corridor, a trio of other Twi’leks appearing at the opposite end of the hall. Themarsa shouted, “Get a stretcher down here!” and one of them, staring, turned and ran in the opposite direction.

“Doriah – Xiaan – there’s a medkit in my room, get it now –”

Doriah shoved to his feet and dashed down the corridor, barely waiting for the door to slide open before he vanished into one of the staterooms.

Sinthya finally succeeded in pulling Hera’s mother off Captain Secura, but released her a moment later as Alecto stumbled to Cham’s side, dropping to her knees beside him. “He’s –”

“Alive,” Themarsa said, and Hera felt her breath stutter, her hands tightening on Xiaan’s shoulders as her cousin tried to twist around to see. The syllables echoed hollowly in Hera’s mind, barely comprehensible as a word.

Doriah emerged from Themarsa’s stateroom, jogging back to them with a leather bag held under his arm. Themara seized it from him as soon as he was within reach and pulled out a hypospray, stripping the protective film off the end with his teeth. He pressed it against Cham’s neck; Hera, watching, thought she saw her father’s lekku twitch, but wasn’t certain if it was real or just a trick of her imagination.

“Sinthya, call the medbay, tell them to prep a bacta tank,” Themarsa said, his voice surprisingly calm as he tossed the used hypospray aside and dove into the bag again. “Where’s that stretcher?”

Xiaan was whimpering low in the back of her throat, half-turned away from Hera to watch. Hera tried to pull her back so that she didn’t have to see, but Xiaan ducked under her arm, darting for Doriah, who caught her absently and gathered her against his side.

Alecto shoved to her feet suddenly, the sharp movement making Hera flinch back. But her mother covered the short distance between them with a few quick steps, grabbing for Hera with bloody-knuckled hands. Hera didn’t resist the embrace, but didn’t return it either, staring across her mother’s shoulder at her father’s blasted body.

“Daddy,” she whispered again, like the child she had been half a lifetime ago. Her mother’s grip tightened on her, pulling her close with a grip like durasteel. She didn’t say anything, just held Hera until more Twi’leks arrived with a stretcher for her father and a pair of binders for the unconscious Mishaan Secura.

*

With the coupler in hand, that meant that the painstaking work of restoring the tiny wires connecting the laser cannons to the targeting computers was all that was left on Kaylani’s V-19 before they could restore the armor plating. Completely replacing them would have been better, but it was obvious that they didn’t have enough replacements available, so where possible they were making do with electrical tape and prayer. Sabine had plenty of experience with that, since requisitioning materials from the Imperial stores was almost more trouble than it was worth.

“I hope the other guy looks worse,” Sabine said, nearly cross-eyed with concentration and wishing for the goggles she had left back in the _Ghost_ as she stripped a pair of wires and sparked them together.

Kaylani was doing the same beside her, but she put the wires she was holding down briefly to jerk a thumb in Zabo’s direction. “He got them – or his gunner did, anyway, I’ve never been sure if he can actually shoot.”

Zabo made a rude gesture at her. “My bomber’s in one piece, unlike this hunk of flying junk.”

“Yeah, because having a gunner almost makes up for your inability to fly in a straight line –”

“See, there’s your problem, you were flying in a straight –”

His words were swallowed by the sound of an alarm klaxon. Startled, Sabine’s fingers slipped on the wires as she dropped them and slid down off the V-19’s wing. All around the hangar people were stopping what they were doing and looking around.

“That’s not the alert –” Kaylani said, then the hangar doors, which had been standing open to the corridor beyond, slammed shut, making the Twi’lek who had been standing beside them jerk back in startled alarm. An instant later a second set of blast doors covered them from view, the big circular lock at their center cycling shut.

Sabine jerked around to stare at the bay entrance, protected from space by a magnetic shield, just as the doors slid shut and locked with a sound that was audible despite the blaring klaxons.

“What is that?” she asked Kaylani.

The Rodian turned towards her, antennae twitching in alarm. “Lockdown,” she said. 

*

Kanan’s first thought when his cell door slammed shut, cutting Ahsoka off from view, was that the ship had been boarded. The sudden scream of an alarm klaxon didn’t help.

He was already on his feet, slamming a fist into the durasteel and barely aware of the way it jarred his arm all the way up to his elbow. “Ahsoka!”

“I’m here!”

Her voice was muffled by the door, but reassuringly present nonetheless. “What happened?” Kanan demanded. “Are we –” He swallowed the words _under attack_ ; he had been certain that it would take at least another rotation for the Crucible to call everyone in from the field. If Lord Vader hadn’t wanted to bother with a full Hunt –

“I don’t know, Kanan. Hold on.”

It wasn’t like there was anything else for him to do. Kanan leaned against the door, rubbing his hands over his face and trying to swallow down his burgeoning panic. He had already resigned himself to dying at the hands of the Inquisition, but he wanted to go down fighting; he didn’t want to be slaughtered like a womp rat in a cage.

Ahsoka was only gone for a few moments. “The brig doors have sealed and the blast doors are down,” she said when she returned. “I can’t get out without cutting through them.”

Of course, _she_ had a lightsaber.

“Hera,” Kanan said, still thinking about boarding parties. They didn’t do a lot of deep space action, but he knew that the Empire theoretically had the capacity to slice an entire starship. He wasn’t sure if it had ever been done. “Can you –”

“I already tried to contact General Syndulla,” Ahsoka said. “Every frequency is jammed.”

It was the Empire. It had to be.

“You need to let me out of here,” Kanan said.

“I can’t do that,” she said without hesitation.

“It’s going to be a lot easier to cut through this door than through the blast doors,” Kanan said. “If the Inquisition is here –”

This time she hesitated before answering. “I can’t sense them,” she said. “We don’t know that it’s the Empire yet –”

Kanan slammed his fist into the door with a dull thump. “I am not dying in here!”

“You need to calm down,” Ahsoka said flatly. “Anyone who wants to get to you has to come through me first, and I assure you, that’s not as easy as it sounds.”

*

The sound of the alarm klaxon sent every pilot in the rec room to their feet.

Flower just froze, staring wildly at Numa for an idea of what to do, then jerked her head around as the hatch slammed shut, the lock engaging. The sound was inaudible over the klaxon, but Flower, watching, saw the light on the control panel turn from green to red.

“We’re under attack?” she made herself ask Numa, remembering the last time the klaxon had gone off. This one sounded different, though.

Someone else said, “That’s not the alert, that’s lockdown –”

“What does that mean?”

Sthenno was fumbling with her comlink, then grimaced and said, “Comms are down; it’s definitely a lockdown.” She frowned at Numa and Nabor, adding doubtfully, “Another drill?”

“It’s got to be,” said one of the other pilots in the room, whose name Flower didn’t know. “What else would it be?”

Nabor eyed him. “You really want to tempt the gods?”

“Stop that,” Numa said absently. She glanced down at Flower as though to make sure she was still there, then crossed the room, elbowing confused and worried Twi’leks aside. For lack of anything else to do, Flower trailed after her.

“It’s probably just another drill,” Numa said when she realized Flower was following her. “We’ve never gone to a lockdown for a real reason. But I’m going to comm the bridge just to make certain.”

“I thought comms were jammed.”

“There’s a hardwired comm link-up in here. That should still work even if everything else is down.” Numa reached for a box set into the all by the door, which Flower had noticed before but taken as decoration, or maybe a fire extinguisher or something. Numa flipped it open and reached inside, unfolding the headset there and fitting it on.

“Pilots’ rec room to bridge, this is Arrow Two –”

Flower strained to hear the response over the chatter of the other pilots and the wail of the klaxon, but couldn’t make it out. Numa’s brows knit together as she listened, then muttered to Flower, “I got through, they’re transferring me to the medbay.”

“That…doesn’t sound like a drill,” Flower offered.

The other woman shook her head, her expression grim. “No, it doesn’t.” She listened a moment longer, then pulled the headset off and handed it to Flower. “It’s Doriah. He wants to talk to you.”

Flower pulled the headset on gingerly. “Doriah?”

_“Thank the gods.”_ He sounded harassed and distracted, but unhurt. _“You’re with Numa? Don’t leave.”_

“I can’t, the doors are locked,” Flower pointed out. “What happened? What did Hera do?” It had to be Hera. It was too much of a coincidence otherwise, and Flower swallowed back the words _I told you so_ with difficulty.

_“Hera didn’t do anything. Uncle Cham’s been shot.”_

“What?”

Doriah repeated himself, then added, _“Don’t tell anyone else yet. The lockdown is because we don’t know if it’s a conspiracy or if she was acting alone.”_

“If _who_ was acting alone?” Flower demanded. “Are you sure it wasn’t Hera?”

_“Yes. We’ve got the shooter already. I’ll tell you later.”_ He took a breath. _“I’m with Hera, Aunt Alecto, and Xiaan; no one else was hurt. Stay where you are and I’ll come get you when we know the ship is secure.”_

“All right,” Flower said uncertainly. “Is Uncle Cham –”

_“He’s alive. Listen, it will be all right. Just stay where you are and I’ll come get you later, okay?”_

“Okay,” Flower said, uneasy. She handed the headset back to Numa at Doriah’s request, worrying at a nail before her training made her stop.

The other pilots in the room had realized what they were doing and had ceased their conversation to watch them. Sthenno pushed her way forward and said, “What’s going on?”

Numa glanced up at her. “It’s not a drill,” she said, picking her words carefully. “There’s a situation, and it’s being handled.”

“The Empire?”

“No,” Numa said. “Not the Empire.”

*

By the time the klaxon stopped, Ahsoka had come to the conclusion that the ship hadn’t been boarded; she couldn’t sense anything in the Force that suggested that kind of disarray. Not being able to leave the brig or contact anyone had her pacing back and forth in front of the sealed cells, feeling as caged as Kanan.

It reminded her unpleasantly of being back in the detention cells on Coruscant all those years ago, sitting and waiting for someone to tell her what was going on and what was going to happen to her. She could feel now as she had felt then that sense of impending doom, of time running through her fingers like sand – as if something terrible had happened, but the worst was still yet to come.

At least she knew now that the worst had already come and gone and there was nothing to be done about it, not anymore. And she had survived it, for whatever good that had done her and the galaxy.

Ahsoka set that aside with an effort. It was becoming clear to her that a lot more Jedi had survived the Purge than she had thought – survived in body if not in spirit, at least.

“Ahsoka?” Kanan said, low-voiced and wary, the words muffled through the thick durasteel of the door. “What’s going on out there?”

“Nothing,” Ahsoka said, rubbing a hand over her face. “Nothing at all. Comms are still jammed.”

She didn’t think she was meant to overhear Kanan’s soft curse. “Useless, paranoid, bantha-headed –”

If anyone had a right to be paranoid it was Cham Syndulla, but Ahsoka had to admit that he had a point. If there was something going on, then she could help; there were few problems that didn’t benefit from throwing a trained Force-user at them. Except politics, perhaps. Probably especially politics, in her opinion.

She crossed her arms over her chest and sat down on the floor next to Kanan’s cell, eyeing the other cells thoughtfully. Unlike Kanan’s, their doors hadn’t locked down, probably because the ray shields hadn’t been active, but Ahsoka was wary of going into one of them even to use the sink to get some water. The last thing she needed was to be trapped there if the ray shields or the doors activated in response to a life sign inside, though she didn’t think they were that sensitive.

“What was the Crucible like?” she said suddenly.

There was a pause, then Kanan said, “It was awful. Why?”

This time it was Ahsoka who hesitated. “I’m just curious,” she said finally. “I don’t understand why anyone would do…that.”

“Me, you mean.”

Yes, Ahsoka meant him, even if she didn’t want to admit it at the moment.

Kanan was quiet, struggling for the words. Eventually, he said, “The Crucible is built over a vergence. And there have been a lot of Force-users living there for a long time, so it’s…it’s like the Temple, in a way, except…wrong. But it’s alive, like…like the Temple’s alive, like Ilum, the other outpost temples. Except it’s…hungry. It just…wants.”

Ahsoka shuddered.

“It’s also haunted,” Kanan added, apparently as an afterthought.

Ahsoka turned that over. She believed in ghosts to some extent; it was hard for anyone raised as a Jedi to deny their existence. There were areas within the Jedi Temple where the memory of what had occurred there continued to reverberate in the Force centuries afterwards. There were even stories of individuals who had managed to retain their consciousness after the death of their physical bodies, though none of them seemed to have been confirmed. It was the sort of thing that seemed less like a Jedi myth and more like a Sith one. The Force had been around for a long time, and it had secrets that even the Jedi didn’t know.

“That sounds unpleasant,” she said eventually, and heard Kanan huff out laughter.

“Yeah,” he said. “That’s one word for it.”

“Did you ever think of running away?”

“I thought about everything at least once,” Kanan said simply. “But I couldn’t do that to Hera. I wouldn’t do that to Hera.”

Ahsoka set her jaw. “You know there’s a reason that the Order warned against attachments.”

“The Order’s been ashes on its pyre for a long time now,” Kanan said.

Ahsoka scratched at the base of her montrals, briefly dislodging her headband. He wasn’t wrong, but after all this time it still hurt to admit it. “For someone trying to claim the title of Jedi, you’re not doing a very good job at living up to it.”

“Thanks, I didn’t think I’d told myself that enough times.”

No, Ahsoka thought wearily. This wasn’t going very well at all, though at least the situation seemed to have made Kanan somewhat more inclined to talk to her. It was just a pity that under the circumstances Ahsoka couldn’t think of anything of substance to discuss.

She jerked to her feet as something in the corridor began beeping insistently. There was a scuffle from the other side of the cell door, as if Kanan had done the same thing; then he demanded, “What? What is it?”

It took Ahsoka a moment to spot the source of the noise, then she spotted the box set into the wall next the door and cursed herself for not recognizing it sooner. They weren’t very common; Republic warships hadn’t bothered with them. “Hard-wired comm line,” she said, flipping open the box; Cham Syndulla really was paranoid. They couldn’t be jammed, though. She couldn’t fit the headset over her montrals since it had been designed for Twi’leks, not Togruta, but she held up the earpiece to the approximate spot and said, “This is Ahsoka Tano.”

_“It’s Doriah Syndulla. Is the Inquisitor secure?”_

Ahsoka glanced over her shoulder at the closed cell door. She could feel Kanan’s frustration seeping into the Force, but there was no real antagonism there. “Yes. What’s happened?”

_“My uncle’s been shot.”_

She caught her breath. “Is he –”

_“He’s alive, but it isn’t –”_ Doriah hesitated, then admitted, _“It isn’t looking good right now.”_

*

The funny thing was that part of Hera wasn’t even certain why she was upset.

She sat on a bench in the medbay with Xiaan huddled against her, watching Sinthya standing guard over an unconscious Mishaan Secura while her mother stomped angrily around and Doriah called people from the hard-wired comm line by the hatch. Xiaan was sobbing, her face buried in Hera’s shoulder as if they were back on Zardossa Stix and no time had passed at all. Hera had an arm around her because she didn’t know what else to do; she had never been any good at comforting anyone.

Themarsa and the doctor on duty had rushed Hera’s father into an operating room upon arriving in the medbay. On an Imperial ship there would have been a medical droid instead of an organic doctor, but most Twi’leks didn’t use them and there were no droids in the medbay here at all.

It had been long enough now that her father should have been transferred to a bacta tank, but the door to the operating room hadn’t opened since they had gone in.

Even with Xiaan weeping practically into her ear, Hera felt curiously detached from everything going on around her, as if it was a vid she was watching in a cantina somewhere. It was as though she couldn’t quite make sense of the fact that she was here now, in the same room as her mother and her cousins, with her father dying behind the nearest door. It was not a place that Hera had ever expected to be and she wasn’t certain how she felt about it, or even if she felt anything at all.

In a way, it felt fair. Her father had murdered Agent Beneke in cold blood; if that was how he died, then it was only justice.

Except that even if she didn’t particularly like him most of the time, Hera still couldn’t imagine a galaxy without her father in it.

She looked up as Doriah pulled his headset off and hung it back up on the hook inside the callbox. Her mother flicked a glance at him, and he said, “That was Ekhri up on the bridge. He says that everything looks clear from there, but they’re getting calls from other ships about why we’re out of contact. He’s putting them off for now with some excuse.”

“Believable?” Sinthya asked.

Doriah shrugged. “He seemed convinced.”

“I want to talk to my crew,” Hera said. There had to be a comm line into the hangar bay, even though as far as Hera was aware Doriah hadn’t called it yet.

“Not exactly a priority, Hera.”

Hera met his gaze. “If they don’t hear from me there’s a very good chance they’ll hotwire the door, and then you’ll have former Imperial SpecOps personnel roaming the halls during your lockdown looking for me and Kanan.” Not that her team was actually Special Operations, but she didn’t think her cousin knew the difference.

Doriah grimaced, looked at Hera’s mother, and at some sign of agreement that Hera didn’t see, he said, “I’ll call the port hangar.”

Xiaan reluctantly let go of her so that Hera could get up and join Doriah. He said something into the headset, then passed it to Hera, saying, “Chief Maala’s getting your crew.”

“Who?”

“Maala Sivron – you remember her?”

Hera shook her head, though she recognized the family name. Sivron was a patrician clan that had come under the patronage of the Syndullas at some point in the past; they traditionally held territory in an odd-shaped finger of territory that pushed out past the usual borders of the Tann Province into the Fenn clan lands.

_“Hera?”_ It was Zeb.

“It’s me. Is everything all right over there?”

_“Seems like the kind of question we should be asking you,”_ he said, sounding wary.

“It’s –” Hera hesitated, because it wasn’t even remotely fine and she wasn’t willing to lie to her team and say that it was. “There’s a situation; we’re not certain if it’s under control yet, so the ship’s on lockdown until then.”

Zeb conveyed this explanation to whoever was standing beside him, which Hera guessed were Sabine and Ezra. _“You need any help?”_

“I don’t think they’d take it if I offered,” Hera pointed out. She was distracted enough that it took her a moment to realize that that wasn’t what Zeb meant. “I think we’re all right for now.”

_“You sure?”_

“For now,” Hera said. Doriah was giving her a meaningful look, so she added, “Don’t do anything rash. One way or another, this should be over soon.”

She said her farewells and hung up the headset. Doriah touched the small of her back lightly, asking, “Are you all right?”

Hera just stared at him. She was saved from having to formulate an answer by the hatch sliding open, making Doriah reach for his blaster before he recognized the person who came in.

Neso Cseh Syndulla did a double-take at seeing Hera, but said gamely, “Hey, coz.”

“Hello, Neso,” she said; he was a third cousin on her father’s side.

The woman with him she didn’t recognize. She was a blue-skinned Twi’lek woman around the same age as Hera’s mother, with fine laugh-lines around her eyes. She looked briefly around the medbay, taking in Xiaan on the bench and Alecto pacing restlessly back and forth in front of the closed door to the operating room. Then she spotted Sinthya and Mishaan Secura.

Doriah and Neso were watching them, both of them with their hands on their holstered blasters.

Her gaze on Captain Secura, the woman opened her mouth as if to speak, then hesitated. Finally, she swallowed and said, “What did she do?”

“Why don’t you tell us, Ooleya?” Doriah said, his voice neutral.

“I don’t know,” she said. “I only got off shift a few hours ago, I’ve been asleep. She was already on duty when I got to our rooms.”

Doriah flicked a glance at Neso, who nodded.

Hera wasn’t even aware of seeing her mother move, but Alecto was suddenly there, staring grimly down at Ooleya. The other woman flinched back from the intensity of her glare, but didn’t look away.

“I don’t know what happened,” she insisted.

“You weren’t surprised to see her here,” Alecto said, her voice soft with menace.

“We’ve been arguing. She hasn’t been happy with the way things have been done on this ship, I thought –”

“You thought that she would try to murder my husband?”

Ooleya went still. “What?”

“Your wife shot my husband, your clan head, in the back,” Alecto said. “Do you really mean to tell me that you knew nothing about this?”

“No!” she insisted. “I would never do anything to endanger this ship; my children live here!”

“They’re your wife’s children too,” Alecto pointed out.

Ooleya swallowed. “Not by blood,” she said. “I didn’t think that mattered to her, but if Mishaan would do this, then I don’t know her at all. Whatever Mishaan did I had no knowledge of and no part in, I swear it on my honor as a Syndulla.”

“She’s telling the truth,” Hera said slowly. As they all looked at her, she pointed out, “I’ve been in interrogations often enough to tell.” And she had gone through ISB interrogation training, but she wasn’t about to mention that right now. Her mother had been on the other side of an ISB interrogation; she knew exactly what that entailed.

Ooleya looked blank, while Doriah just looked uncomfortable. Neso nodded, though, and said, “I agree.”

Hera stared at him, trying to work out what position he held on the _Forlorn Hope_. The last time she had seen him had been at the going away party his parents had held before he left for university on Alderaan. As best as she could recall, he had been intending to study philosophy or literature or something else utterly unrelated to what he seemed to be doing now.

He caught her eye and mouthed “intelligence” at her, which made Hera blink. That made him her counterpart, she realized after a moment.

Hera’s mother was staring at Ooleya, her arms crossed over her chest. Abruptly, she said, “I believe you. Wake her up and let’s see what she says.”

Ooleya only hesitated for an instant, then she stepped away from them and towards a medicine cabinet set into the wall. She opened it and sorted through the contents with quick, familiar movements that told Hera she was probably a doctor or a nurse, finding what she was looking for within a few moments. Squinting at it from across the room, Hera realized it was an adrenaline patch.

Sinthya stepped aside so that Ooleya could administer it to Captain Secura. The other woman didn’t hesitate, pushing up the sleeve of her wife’s jacket so that she could slap the patch against the bare skin of her arm.

Captain Secura shuddered all over in reaction to the patch, her lekku twitching wildly. She opened her eyes, staring around at them – first at Sinthya on one side of her, then at Hera’s mother facing her down, taking in Hera and her cousins still on the far side of the room, and then, at last, at her wife.

“Oo –”

Ooleya caught her chin between her fingers and said deliberately, “You are not my wife. I do not know you.” She released Captain Secura with a jerk and turned away, tears pricking at the corners of her eyes.

“Ooleya!” Captain Secura said, sounding desperate, but the other woman wouldn’t look back at her. “I can –”

“Explain?” Hera’s mother said. “You’d better hope so.”

*

“There’s something going on over at the _Forlorn Hope_ ,” said the _Mercy Kill_ ’s first officer, a tall, broad-shouldered Twi’lek woman with pale purple skin.

“There’s a shock,” the captain muttered. “Damn Syndullas.” He shot a glance at Secchun and she let her mouth quirk a little in amusement and acknowledgment, striding forward to get a better look out of the _Kill_ ’s viewport.

From here, she had a clear line of sight to the Syndulla flagship. The current fleet formation was more compact than Secchun was comfortable with, but it made sharing personnel and equipment easier as various ships conducted repairs. Within a rotation or two they would spread out again – not a moment too soon, as far as Secchun was concerned. Keeping the ships this close together was a recipe for disaster. If one of the overworked hyperdrives or engines blew, the blast radius could easily reach the nearest ships.

But it meant that she could see the _Forlorn Hope_ without having to strain her eyes or look at a hologram. The big warship hung in space the same way it had done the last time Secchun had glanced at it, as familiar by now as the stars over Ryloth. It took her a moment of searching to see what had changed.

“The hangar doors are closed,” she observed. That was unusual, but didn’t seem like a reason for alarm. “So?”

“So Triumph Squadron is flying CAP right now,” said the first officer. “The _Hope_ never closes her doors while one of her fighter squadrons is out.”

Secchun frowned out the viewport. From here she couldn’t see the combat air patrol, the starfighter squadron flying a protective orbit around the fleet, but she knew that the _Hope_ wouldn’t leave its people out in the cold any more than the _Kill_ would, not if there was any other choice.

“Get me the _Forlorn Hope_ ,” she said.

A few minutes later, she blew out her cheeks in frustration, glad that she was on a comm channel and not a hologram. Her curiosity was rapidly rising towards alarm. “I see,” she said, keeping her voice calm. “Inform General Syndulla I’d like to speak with him as soon as possible. _Mercy Kill_ out.”

Secchun slipped her headset off, but didn’t hand it back to the communications officer. She tapped it against her leg, staring out the viewport at the _Hope_ and its closed blast doors. The officer on the _Forlorn Hope_ she had spoken to hadn’t been one she knew, a young Syndulla male who had told her that both Mishaan Secura and Cham Syndulla were unavailable, as well as Alecto Syndulla when Secchun had asked after her. It was always difficult to tell over a comm channel, but Secchun was fairly certain that Ekhri Syndulla had sounded more strained than any ordinary situation would call for.

And Secchun knew who it was that had just arrived on the _Forlorn Hope_.

She passed the headset off to the comms officer and said, “Call the hangar. Tell them to prep a shuttle and an incursion team.”

*

“What did the Empire offer you in exchange for killing Cham Syndulla?” Neso asked, his voice soft and persuasive. “Did they threaten you? The people you lost at the colony? Your family back on Ryloth? Hera, what’s the going rate for that sort of thing these days?”

Hera flinched as everyone looked around at her, but said, “It depends. Last year, the ISB paid a million credits to someone in Saw Gerrera’s organization to walk him into an Imperial trap, but he survived and the price was never paid. Four years ago a Mandalorian noble turned in a cousin who was working with offworld insurgents and got her title when she was executed. But small groups are small change.”

“Traitor,” Mishaan Secura said, her lip curling.

“Maybe,” Hera said, “but I’ve never shot anyone in the back.”

“And I’d never take the Empire’s blood money,” Mishaan said. “Or anything else of theirs, either, no matter who it was. I’m not a damned sentimental fool.”

Hera’s mother hissed, but Neso didn’t react. “Lon Secura, then? I know Clan Secura has suffered back on Ryloth. Palpatine doesn’t trust them because one of their patrician daughters was a Jedi all those years ago. I’m sure having this fleet to bargain with would allow you to return to your clan and your family.”

“Lon Secura is a traitor to my people and to Ryloth, as is every Secura who chose the comfort of their home and servitude to the Empire over liberty.” She looked at Hera and said deliberately, “I never thought I would encounter that kind of cowardice again.”

Alecto raised a hand before Sinthya caught her wrist. She flicked an irritated glance at her cousin, but her gaze was on Mishaan as she said, “Say one more word about my daughter and it will be the last thing you do.”

“You still haven’t said why you tried to murder Cham Syndulla,” Neso said as if the interruption hadn’t occurred. He hadn’t even looked up.

Mishaan blinked once.

“Yes, that’s right, you faithless gutkurr,” Alecto said. “It will be a cold day in the Burning Lands before Cham Syndulla dies because of someone like you.”

“He betrayed this fleet!” Mishaan said with sudden violence, surging forward on the bench before Doriah put a hand on her shoulder and shoved her back down. “You’re all too foolish to see it because you’re so grateful to have your own blood back, like it’s chance that the only people who ever come back from the colony are your own family!”

“Betrayed this fleet?” Doriah demanded. “How, by fighting for it at every turn? This fleet wouldn’t exist except for him! We’d all be back on Ryloth on our knees before the Emperor, those few of us who weren’t wearing slave collars!”

“He would have handed this fleet over to the Empire if he thought it would get her back!” Mishaan spat, stabbing a finger at Hera. “There’s no bargaining with the Empire, no compromise. He brought strangers here, to this ship – that Togruta with her arcane tricks, that collaborating whore, and now this? Imperials in this fleet, on this ship? That creature you have locked in the brig, whatever he is? And _this_ traitor?”

Hera shut her eyes.

“I believed in Cham Syndulla once,” Mishaan said. “But I now believe that he would lead this fleet to destruction. If I have to die to save my people, then so be it.”

“Someone is going to die for it,” Hera’s mother said. “Whether it’s you or every being in this fleet remains to be seen.”

*

“So,” Ezra said, dragging the single syllable out as long as he could, “I’m not saying this is your fault –”

“It’s not,” Zeb said, after a hasty glance around to make sure there was no one near enough to overhear. Sabine, sitting beside him on the ramp, did the same and then glared at Ezra.

He ignored it and went on, “– but does this happen _everywhere_ you go? I mean, first there was –” Ezra hesitated briefly over what had happened the last time they had been in the general vicinity of the Free Ryloth fleet, then covered it up with, “I mean, Kanan got arrested, and then you blew up the Crucible –”

“You were there too!”

“– and then the mess at the clearinghouse, and now this. It kind of starts looking like you’ve got a problem.”

Chopper chortled. Sabine shot him a dirty glare and said, “No, we don’t, you rustbucket!” To Ezra, she said, “This is a little extreme even for us. You didn’t really get us at our best.”

“And then there was that explosion during Empire Day!” Ezra said, counting back in his head and realizing that, unbelievably, it hadn’t even been a week since then. It seemed like a lot longer.

“Okay, _that_ was the Twi’leks,” Zeb said firmly. “Not us. This isn’t us either.” 

“It’s probably the Twi’leks this time too,” Sabine said, then looked hastily around again.

There was no one close enough to hear her, though the guards were lurking near enough to shoot them if they tried to do anything suspicious. _Like breathe funny_ , Ezra thought sourly, eyeing them. The other Twi’leks in the hangar were ignoring them, gathering together in small groups to discuss possible reasons for the lockdown.

At least the klaxon had stopped. Now there was nothing but indistinct murmurs of conversation from across the big hangar, and the echoing silence of not knowing what had happened. Zeb had passed on what Hera had told him when they had finally been able to talk to her, but the little it had been had almost been worse than nothing at all.

“What do you think is going on out there?” he asked.

Zeb and Sabine both looked at each other, but it was Chopper who grumbled a response. “Yeah,” Sabine agreed. “It could be anything. But I’m guessing it’s a lot worse than anything we can think of.”

*

Agent Kallus could smell the Inquisitors. 

_Smell_ perhaps wasn’t the right word to use, but he couldn’t think of anything else. He was aware of their presence on the _Relentless_ in a way that made his skin creep and the fine hairs on his arms stand up, despite the fact that he hadn’t seen any of them since that last meeting in the situation room. He knew that they had been arriving for the past few hours, the sense of their presence steadily increasing as ship after ship docked on the star destroyer. It left everyone onboard short-tempered and snapping at each other, officers and NCOs dressing down their subordinates for perceived faults and outright fights between people who should have known better. Already two stormtroopers and one of Konstantine’s sailors were dead; a dozen others were in the medbay, several were in the brig, and one TIE fighter was out of commission after the pilot had tried to crash it into another. It was the last thing they needed before a major engagement.

Kallus was never working with Inquisitors again, not if he could help it.

He looked up from his datapad as the chime outside his assigned stateroom sounded. “Enter.”

The door slid open, admitting the Mirialan Inquisitor called the First. Kallus set his datapad aside, trying to conceal his instinctive grimace. “Yes?”

“We’ve arrived.” Her voice was almost entirely without inflection; he could have been listening to a droid.

“Enough of you to deal with your rogues, I presume?” Kallus said.

“If the fleet can do its job.”

_Perhaps if you stopped inspiring them to murder each other_ , Kallus thought, but didn’t voice it. “I have no concerns about the fleet.”

“Then there should be nothing to worry about.” She turned without waiting for a dismissal, her departure soundless until the door slid shut behind her.

No. Kallus was never working with Inquisitors again.

He tapped the comm unit on his desk. “Agent Kallus to Admiral Konstantine,” he said. “The Inquisition has arrived. Deploy the fleet.”

*

It felt like hours before the rec room hatch slid open, though Flower knew from the chrono on the wall that it hadn’t yet been one. She stood up as Doriah came in, spotting the marines who had accompanied him waiting in the corridor outside.

He put an arm around her and pressed a kiss to her cheek, asking, “Are you all right?” in Basic.

“I’m fine,” Flower assured him. “I’ve just been sitting here. How’s Uncle Cham?”

Doriah shook his head. “He’s hanging in there, but it isn’t looking good right now. He’s in surgery with Themarsa and the other doctors.”

Flower swallowed. “It’s that bad?”

“It’s that bad.”

She took a breath. “Do you know who – do you know who did it?”

“Yeah,” Doriah said. “We know.” He glanced up as Numa, Sthenno, and Nabor came over to join them, the other Twi’leks in the room crowding close and waiting impatiently for more news.

It was Nabor who said, “What happened? It’s not a drill?”

“Not a drill,” Doriah said. “There’ll be an announcement later.”

Numa leaned in to put a hand on his arm, saying softly in Basic, “This is related to what we were speaking of earlier?”

He shook his head. “No. New problem. Leave my cousin out of this.”

Flower snorted softly and glanced away, though not before she saw the irritated glance Doriah shot at her. ISB officers sowed trouble wherever they went, deliberate or not.

“Is there any reason you can’t tell us now?” asked another pilot. “I mean, we’re not civilians –”

Doriah caught his eye and repeated, “There’ll be an announcement.”

Dissatisfied, the pilot subsided. One of his friends elbowed him meaningfully.

They all jumped as the comm link-up near the door sounded suddenly, then Doriah crossed to it and pulled the headset on. “Rec room, Arrow Leader,” he said, then listened with his brows drawn together. “All right. I’ll check it out.”

He hung the headset back up and turned back to them. “Numa, Sthenno, Nabor, with me. Ojeda –” he hesitated.

“I’m going with you,” Flower said; the horror of being left here with strangers suddenly too much to contemplate.

Doriah grimaced but didn’t argue. “Numa, you’re on her. Come on.”

“If there’s something going on, then you should take all of us,” said a pilot whose name Flower didn’t know.

“The fewer people wandering around right now, the better,” Doriah said. “Don’t worry. You’ll get your chance.”

*

“Alecto.”

Hera raised her head at the sound of her mother’s name. The medbay felt half-empty now; Doriah had gone to fetch Ojeda and Neso and Sinthya had taken Mishaan Secura to the brig, leaving Hera alone with her mother and Xiaan. Ooleya Tre Syndulla had joined the other two doctors in the operating room with Hera’s father.

It was Themarsa who had spoken. Hera hadn’t even heard the door to the operating room cycle open.

Hera’s mother had been leaning against a wall with her lekku slumping down over her shoulders, but there wasn’t any exhaustion in her eyes when she looked up. “Tell me.”

“The important thing is that he’s alive,” Themarsa said. He had washed his hands before he had come out but there were specks of blood on his white doctor’s coat, and the persistent and familiar smell of burned flesh.

Hera shut her eyes. She knew that smell all too well – had caused it more often than not. Had maybe done so this time too, even if hers hadn’t been the hand on the blaster.

“Is he going to stay that way?” Alecto asked after a pause, like she had been waiting for Themarsa to continue.

Themarsa blew out his cheeks, suddenly looking a hundred years older than his real age. “I don’t know.”

“How many times was he shot?” Hera made herself ask. It was harder to form the words in Twi’leki than it should have been; Hera could hear them clearly in her mind but couldn’t quite translate them to speech even though it was her milk tongue.

“Three times in the back,” Themarsa said wearily. “His armor caught some of it, or we’d still be scraping parts of him off the floor right now. We’re still trying to stabilize him so we can put him in a bacta tank. If we can do that, he’ll almost certainly live. If we can’t…then he won’t.” He rubbed his hands over his face. “We’re just lucky Mishaan didn’t shoot him in the head.”

Hera’s mother was quiet. Eventually, she said, “When will you know?”

Themarsa shook his head. “A few hours, a few days – we’re doing what we can. He’s lucky he was on the _Hope_ , none of the other ships have the equipment we do.”

_What we need is a real medbay_ , Hera thought, but knew better than to voice it. On an Imperial ship there would be medical droids as well as doctors, with top of the line equipment instead of twenty-year-old Republic surplus bought on the black market. Cham Syndulla was a notorious enough criminal that the Empire could probably be persuaded to use it on him too, instead of just letting his injuries run their course. The optics of a public trial and execution would be too much for someone like Grand Moff Tarkin or even Emperor Palpatine to resist.

Somehow, she suspected her mother and uncle wouldn’t agree to turning her father over the Empire for medical treatment, since it would undoubtedly also involve handing herself over as well, if not the entire fleet. Mishaan Secura’s accusations aside, Hera knew her father too well; he would rather die than do that. Had come very close to it on occasion.

Might, this time.

“What are you going to do, Alecto?” Themarsa said quietly.

“I can’t even throw Mishaan out an airlock because she’s a damn Secura,” Alecto said. She grimaced. “Sinthya reminded me, so I guess law school comes in handy even after the end of the world. Cham wouldn’t thank me for violating clan law even if the _schutta_ tried to murder him, and the other clan heads would never stand for it.”

Hera stared blankly before she dragged her decade-old government lessons up out of the back of her memory. Clan heads held the power of life and death over their own clans, but were limited in their ability to act against individuals from other clans even on their own lands. By clan law, a patrician like Mishaan Secura should be turned over to her own clan for justice, though the Secura could choose to forswear her, in which case the Syndulla could do whatever he wanted to her.

Always assuming the Syndulla survived long enough to do so.

And if Lon Secura hadn’t been safely ensconced on Ryloth, ignorant of what was going on parsecs away in the blackness of space.

“The Synedrion might decide otherwise,” Themarsa said cautiously. “They have that power.”

Alecto shook her head. “I’ve spent enough time in Synedrion meetings with Cham to know we’ll never get a majority on anything that might violate clan sovereignty, even for something like this.”

“You might put it up anyway,” Themarsa said.

She frowned at him. “Why would I admit any of this to the Synedrion? Those gutkurrs have been after us for years.”

“Alecto,” Themarsa said gently, “until Cham recovers, you are Syndulla.”

*

Moving through the _Forlorn Hope_ ’s deserted corridors was one of the more disconcerting experiences of Doriah’s life. After six years living on the ship he knew it as intimately as he had known his old home on Ryloth. When he and Xiaan had first arrived, he had spent weeks and months pacing out the corridors of the massive ship until he knew every accessible inch of it, terrified that someday he might have to hide or escape and not know where to go. He hadn’t been able to sleep anyway, so he had spent the nights finding his way around, making friends with the crew members on the night shift, who had first had been wary of someone who had escaped from Imperial custody but eventually had softened to his presence.

The ship had been quiet then, but now it was silent. Shut and locked doors pricked at his nerves, and every few corridors he and his small group had to pause to key open the blast doors that sealed off each section of the ship in case of emergency. Probably originally they had been meant to protect the rest of the ship against explosive decompression and to slow down boarders, but now they just served as an impediment, gnawing at Doriah’s already frayed nerves.

The comm call he had received had been from the bridge, where the acting captain was monitoring the ship. One of the airlocks had cycled open; closer inspection revealed that a stealthed ship, probably a shuttle, had slipped through the _Hope_ ’s security perimeter and locked onto the hull. With Lysha’s marines still quartering the ship searching for any other signs of trouble, Doriah’s team in the pilots’ rec room had been the closest to the breached airlock.

At least, he thought dryly, the sealed blast doors would slow whoever it was down as well as him, since they wouldn’t have the security codes. A laser cutter would do it, as would precisely applied explosives, but he hadn’t heard any of the latter. He wouldn’t know about the former, since he couldn’t talk to the bridge to discover if any of the doors had been opened.

They came to the blast door nearest the airlock and Doriah stepped up to the control panel, waiting until the rest of his team – except for Ojeda, who hung prudently back – got into position, then keyed in the code to open the door. As it slid open he jerked his blaster up, braced for anything from one of his cousins to a squad of stormtroopers.

“Oh,” he said a moment later. “It’s you.”

Secchun Fenn lowered her own blaster. She was accompanied by four Twi’leks whom Doriah didn’t know, but who were presumably Fenn crewmembers from the _Mercy Kill_ ; while none of them had caste markings they all had the distinctively pale Fenn skin, as though it had been bleached to nothing but a ghost of the brighter colors found in other clans.

“Is that any way to greet a friend?” she inquired, holstering her blaster and gesturing at her companions to do the same.

Belatedly, Doriah realized that it was probably a good idea to follow her lead, but he left the strap on his holster undone. “I wasn’t aware we were friends. What are you doing here? We’re on lockdown.”

“That,” the Fenn said, “is obvious. I’ve been comming Cham for the past two hours, but my transmissions to him have been jammed and some little fool on the bridge has been putting me off with excuses.”

“Yeah, that would be the lockdown,” Doriah said, eyeing her warily. “So what, you just decided to stroll on over on a stealthed shuttle? Usually when you drop by unannounced you at least land in a hangar.”

“Unfortunately that’s impossible at the moment, as all the bays are sealed.”

“Yeah,” Doriah said again. “That would be the lockdown.”

She sniffed a little, apparently dismissive, but there was an undertone of worry in her voice as she said, “A somewhat extraordinary decision. Dare I even ask what brought it on?”

“I wouldn’t recommend it,” Doriah said. “I would recommend that you get back on your shuttle, turn the stealth off, and go back to your ship.”

The Fenn shook her head as if he had said something unimaginably stupid. “I would hate to have made a wasted trip,” she said. “I’ll see the Syndulla now.”

“That’s not going to happen,” Doriah said.

She stared at him, her brows narrowed. “Then I’ll see Alecto.”

“That’s not going to happen either.”

She gave him a weary look. “Let me be more clear, little Syndulla. I am not the only person in the fleet who’s been trying to contact the _Forlorn Hope_ , including many of the other Syndulla captains and clan heads. Everyone out there can look through a viewport and notice that the _Hope_ ’s bay doors are closed, and everyone out there saw that Corellian freighter arrive yesterday and sit outside the security perimeter while I’m guessing the Syndulla and Captain Secura argued over whether to let it in or not.”

Doriah crossed his arms over his chest. “So?”

“So the _Kill_ still has the last known positions of both Imperial and fleet ships during the battle before we jumped away, and I happened to be looking at them before I made the decision to be over here. And that little freighter was at the battle, but it isn’t one of ours. And it certainly doesn’t look like an Imperial.”

“My uncle has a lot of contacts outside the fleet.”

“And I have a lot of contacts in it, which is how I know that Hera Syndulla is now on this ship.” As Doriah caught his breath, startled, she added, “Or would you like me to be more precise? An allegedly _former_ officer from the Imperial Security Bureau, an Imperial Inquisitor, and three other Imperial Security Bureau agents are now on this ship. And now it’s under lockdown, which leads me to believe that they’re not so former after all.”

“No,” Doriah said, “they’re definitely former.” He gritted his teeth, wishing he could pass this off to someone else, but with the comms jammed there was no one to call. Besides, his aunt would only advocate violence even if he could get through to her. “You’d better come with me. But leave your people here.”

*

_This is a nightmare_ , Xiaan thought. It felt a little like one, with a faint sense of unreality that made everything take on a bright edge and gave every sound a hollow, echoing quality. Except if it had really been a nightmare, then Xiaan would be able to wake up. She couldn’t do so now, couldn’t shake the encroaching feeling of something terrible happening.

Part of her wanted to go back to her stateroom, but the rest of her couldn’t bear the idea of leaving the medbay. If something happened to Uncle Cham –

She couldn’t not be here. She just couldn’t.

The three women in the medbay waiting room seemed to form three points of a triangle, with Xiaan on one bench, Hera on another, and her aunt Alecto leaning against the wall next to the door to the operating room. It reminded Xiaan uneasily of one of the old myths her mother had used to tell her when she was little, of the three women from the oldest three curiate families that had gone into the heart of Ryloth to be handmaidens to the gods. One of those families had been extinct for centuries, but the other two had been Syndulla and Fenn.

Themarsa had gone back into the operating room what felt like hours ago, though Xiaan knew it hadn’t really been that long, and since then no one had come out. She knew that Themarsa would have emerged to tell them if her uncle had died, so Cham still had to be alive, but beyond that Xiaan couldn’t begin to guess what was happening in there.

_He’ll be all right_ , she told herself firmly. He had to be all right.

Except Xiaan had seen her baby cousin Lika die, all those years ago. Her mother had died. Her aunts had died. Doriah’s mother Clotho had died. Her brother was gone, maybe – probably – dead. In some ways it seemed more likely that her uncle would die too than that he wouldn’t.

She looked up as she heard the hatch cycle open, then stumbled to her feet as Doriah came through. He put his arm out for her and she folded herself against his side.

“Any change?” he asked her softly.

Xiaan shook her head, closing her eyes and breathing in the familiar scent of him. Having him here didn’t actually make anything better, but it felt that way, a little.

Her aunt’s voice cut into her reverie. “What is _she_ doing here?”

Startled, Xiaan opened her eyes and looked around. Ojeda had followed Doriah in, looking wary as her gaze slid in Hera’s direction, but after her –

“Your ship keeps putting me off and I’ve been comming your husband for the past two hours,” Secchun Fenn said. “The situation seemed to require a personal touch.”

“So you brought her _here_?” Alecto demanded of Doriah, who grimaced.

“She knew about –”

“You’re Hera Syndulla,” Secchun Fenn observed, her voice carefully neutral.

Hera hadn’t stood up. She was still sitting on the bench with her hands folded in her lap, watching them with a cool, calculating disinterest in her gaze that made Xiaan a little nervous. She said, “I am.”

“I’m Secchun Fenn, the head of Clan Fenn. This is not where I expected to find you.”

Hera raised one eyebrow.

Alecto put herself between them, her hands clenched into fists at her sides. “What do you want, Fenn? This is Syndulla business, not a fleet affair.”

Secchun’s gaze flickered around the room before she asked, “Where’s Cham? It’s him I want to speak with.”

“He’s in surgery. Did you order Mishaan Secura to kill my husband?”

“ _What_?”

Aunt Alecto didn’t reach for her blaster, but Xiaan felt Doriah tense. He kept one arm around her, hooking his other hand around his blaster grip.

“I know Mishaan’s been reporting to you,” Alecto said. “Maybe for years, certainly these past few weeks. So I’m going to ask you one more time. Did you order Mishaan Secura to kill my husband so you can get control of this fleet?”

Her voice slow with disbelief, Secchun said, “If I ever see the need to have someone assassinated, Alecto, I assure you it will be successful.”

Alecto let her breath out slowly, then crossed her arms. “Cham’s alive. So is Mishaan, in case you were wondering.”

“Thus the lockdown.”

“No, we have her in custody. We’re making certain that she didn’t have any other co-conspirators.”

Secchun flicked a gaze at Hera, still seated and eyeing her thoughtfully. “All these Imperials onboard and it’s your own people you suspect?”

“I deserted,” Hera said, her voice quiet.

“So you say.”

“Insult my daughter again and I’ll have you thrown off this ship,” Alecto said. “I might have you thrown off anyway.”

“That would be a very bad idea,” Secchun said. “Who’s in charge?”

“I don’t see how that’s any of your concern, Fenn.”

“Let me rephrase that,” Secchun said, “Cham Syndulla is the head of Clan Syndulla. He never named an heir. Who is in charge of the clan that comprises a third of this fleet and over half of its fighting forces?”

“He has an heir,” Alecto muttered; Hera looked away.

“This fleet will not follow an Imperial officer, former or otherwise,” Secchun Fenn said. “Even the Syndulla families will not do it. Who is giving orders at the moment, Alecto? And do the other Syndulla families know?”

Alecto let her breath out. “I am. At the moment. And no, no one knows. We haven’t even announced it to the ship.”

“Do you want my advice?”

“Not particularly.”

“I have some experience with finding myself in charge of my clan with no warning and against everyone’s wishes, including my own,” Secchun said. “You’ll have to tell the Synedrion, preferably as soon as possible. I advise that you tell the Syndulla families and ships you trust to support you before then, but not the ones who won’t. And you know not all of them will.”

“I’m aware,” Alecto said flatly. “And as I recall, Fenn, I just said I didn’t want your advice.”

Secchun crossed her arms. “We are on the same side, _Syndulla_. And I assume that you want to keep the fleet whole as much as I do. If rumors get out before you can make an official announcement, then ships will break off and scatter. And die. Cham held this fleet together.”

“Cham is still alive!”

“And is he going to stay that way?”

Alecto drew in her breath, her lekku trembling.

More gently, Secchun said, “You know as well as I do that if words gets out Cham Syndulla has died, it will destroy this fleet. We could lose a third, maybe more, within a matter of hours. And then the Empire will destroy them and us both.”

“‘We?’” Alecto said sharply.

Secchun met her gaze, calm. “Fenn will stay with Syndulla.”

“How generous of you,” Alecto snapped.

“Gods below, woman, don’t be stupid!” Secchun snapped back. “This fleet is as much Ryloth as we will ever have again, and I won’t abandon it. I will not do that to my people, not again.”

As Alecto drew in her breath, Secchun added with a flash of real anger, “And don’t you dare accuse me of not fighting for this fleet. The _Mercy Kill_ has stood side by side with the _Forlorn Hope_ at every battle we’ve fought. I have lost people in the protection of this fleet, friends and family both.”

Alecto let her breath out. “I know that.” She eyed Secchun with distaste and added, “I just don’t know what you think you can gain by coming here.”

“Maybe,” Secchun said, “I was worried about a friend.”

“I’m not your friend. And neither is Cham, either.”

Secchun flicked a glance towards Hera and said, “You and I have something in common, Alecto. Something that binds us. If your daughter could leave the Empire, then that means my son could too. And I want my son.”

*

Kallus had never been in the Starfighter Corps, but like most ISB agents he had a bit of experience with everything. Being down in the starfighter bays reminded him of his own early days in the field, now long past.

Thinking about _that_ made him remember how it had ended, and his slight edge of relaxation at the good-natured camaraderie and pent-up air of tension around him faded. It didn’t help that the pilots all went quiet as he walked down the line of parked TIEs, watching him warily; even inside the Imperial service no one trusted the ISB.

The pilot he was looking for was down at the end of one row, talking to a pair of female pilots with their helmets tucked under their arms. All three of them turned at Kallus’s approach; the women backed off as he jerked his chin to one side.

“Walk with me, Lieutenant Fenn.”

“Yes, sir.” The Twi’lek man fell cautiously into step with Kallus as they left the TIE fighters behind, pacing out to the edge of the closed bay doors.

Unlike most of his garishly-colored species, Thamir Fenn’s skin was pure white except for the geometric black tattoos on his headtails and around one eye. In conjunction with his black TIE pilot’s jumpsuit it had an eerie effect, as though Kallus was standing beside a ghost rather than a living being.

“You’ve spoken with your handler?” Kallus asked after a moment of silence to give Fenn time to sweat.

“Yes, sir,” Fenn said; the only trace of his Rylothean accent was a slight sharpness on the vowels. “Agent Sherin said to take your orders as your own.” He hesitated for an instant, then said, “I’m not Hera Syndulla. My loyalty is to the Empire and the Emperor.”

“Not to your mother? Or your clan?”

“My mother is a terrorist and a traitor. My clan is the Imperial Starfighter Corps.”

Kallus didn’t let himself smile. “What about your brother Nawara? We have reports that he’s on the _Mercy Kill_.”

Fenn hesitated for an instant. “My brother is very young,” he said. “He’s been in bad company. I’m certain that under more – more appropriate circumstances he could be…rehabilitated.”

“You understand that such circumstances may not be possible. We are going into combat.”

The Twi’lek swallowed. “I understand, sir.”

Kallus looked at him for long moments, letting the silence stretch out between them. Eventually, Thamir Fenn repeated, “I’m not Hera Syndulla. I know where my loyalty lies.”

“So did she,” Kallus said. “I believe that was her problem.”

Fenn met his eyes. His own gaze was a brilliant purple, the blaze of color shocking against the pure white of his skin. “It won’t be mine, sir.”

*

With Themarsa and the other two doctors gone, it was very quiet in the operating room.

All Alecto was aware of was the sound of Cham’s breathing, harsh through the respirator that covered half his face. Themarsa would come back in soon so that he could be transferred to a bacta tank, since at the moment it looked like he was going to live after all, but Alecto had a few minutes alone with her husband first.

The lockdown had been lifted not long ago. They – or rather she – had made the announcement about Cham’s injuries to the ship as well, which was something Alecto hadn’t even considered she would have to do herself until Themarsa had pointed it out. By that point she had just been wearily glad that it wasn’t Secchun Fenn saying so.

Cham looked very still.

“Cham –” Alecto started to say, then felt her own panic rise up. It took her a few moments to catch her breath, digging her nails into her palms in the hope that the pain would get her to pay attention.

“Don’t you dare die, you bastard,” she whispered. “Don’t you dare die. I don’t want your job.”

She took a ragged breath, pressing a hand to her mouth, and added, “Just because I said I’d trade you for our daughter doesn’t mean I actually want to have to make that bargain. So don’t you die on me, Cham Syndulla.”

Alecto got to her feet, her whole body one solid throbbing ache of tension, then leaned down to press a kiss to Cham’s forehead, slipping her fingers briefly into his slack ones. “Don’t you leave me with this, my love.”

There was no response. Alecto released his hand, trying to keep from shaking as she went to the door, where Themarsa and Ooleya were waiting to transfer Cham to a bacta tank. Both doctors looked exhausted, their lekku drooping limply down their backs. Themarsa gripped Alecto’s shoulder briefly before he went into the room she had just left.

The others had all gone. Alecto stood in the empty waiting room, slack with fear and grief, and tried to think past her own burgeoning panic.

She needed her daughter. She had to speak to the Synedrion and the Syndulla family heads, but first she needed to hold her daughter. Not for long, just for a few moments to reassure herself that Hera was here and unhurt and safe, even if Alecto hadn’t seen her half an hour ago. Her husband might be dying but she needed her daughter. And then she would do her duty – Cham’s duty. But first she needed to hold her daughter.

She never got the chance.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For new readers, I do daily progress reports over on Tumblr, under the tag "[daily fic snippet](http://bedlamsbard.tumblr.com/tagged/daily-fic-snippet)," if you want to keep track of what I'm working on or get a hint of what's happening in the next chapter or two.


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